


Adam Lived: Ghosts of the Confederacy

by Todesengel



Series: Adam Lived [2]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 10:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every night Chris reminds himself that while his wife died, his son lived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adam Lived: Ghosts of the Confederacy

On the bad nights, he dreams of fire and smoke and the char of flesh. He dreams of horses screaming, of heat and death and -- in the worst nightmares -- of finding not one but two bodies. The dreams strangle him, trap him in their horror until he wakes gasping and half-mad and he has to get out of bed and touch Adam's face, his hair, his chest; listen to the wheezing rasp of his breath; reassure himself that while his wife died, his boy lived.

Even without the dreams, he takes in the proof of Adam's life a score of times every night, his own act of faith; an act that wounds as much as it heals, for although Adam no longer wakes up screaming in the night, inconsolable with fear and pain, his wheezy, labored breathing can't help but remind Chris of his failure, and the fact that though the flames have long since died, that killing fire still rages in his son's every breath. And though he goes back to his bed once more reassured that Adam lives, his sleep is still deeply troubled -- if not of dreams of Sarah's twisted, blackened body, then he dreams of waking to Adam's body cold and stiff, face as blue as that of a hanged man.

Of course, he doesn't sleep much, anymore. 

Chris is out in the back paddock spreading hay for the mares when Two Bits begins to bray, his high pitched _hee-haw_ sounding the alert of a visitor to the ranch. He feels his back tense up until he recognizes the horse -- one of his, a nice roan mare with two white socks that he sold to the Haverlys last spring -- and he drops his hand away from where his gun would be if he hadn't slung the belt over a post about twenty minutes into the chores. He doesn't relax, though, because the Haverly boy has ridden that mare hard -- he can see the foamy sweat bright against her flank from here -- and the Haverly boy doesn't ride hard for anything, except maybe to impress the girls, and even then he barely makes the horse blow. 

He's already got his gun belt cinched tight when Adam makes his way up the hill to him, huffing and puffing like the Haverly's mare. He feels his chest tighten in sympathy, and he wants nothing more than to run down there and scoop up his boy, but Nathan says he's supposed to let Adam run and play and do things like a normal boy. So he goes back to pretending to do his chores and waits for Adam to reach him. 

"Son," he says. "That Bertram Haverly down there?"

Adam nods, too out of breath to speak for a moment, then gasps out, "Miz Travis sent him. Trouble in town, Pa."

"Hell. When ain't there?" Chris leans the pitchfork up against the paddock fence and takes the halter Adam brought him. He nods down at the house and says, "Go make sure that idiot walks his horse."

"Aw Pa, can't I—"

"Get on, boy, and do what you're told." 

The Haverly's mare is no longer blowing hard by the time Chris gets his big black down to the tack room, and Chris is pleased to see Bertram's loosened her girth a bit and let her have some water. He tips his hat to the boy and uses the movement to hid his grin at the sight of Fancy already saddled, with Adam sitting defiantly upon her. His boy is as stubborn as the mules they breed, and Chris ain't sure if he should be proud of the fact that Adam is so clearly his son, or sad that he doesn't take after his mother more. 

Adam lifts his chin and straightens his back when he sees Chris looking at him, and Fancy shifts restlessly at the movement. Chris gives him the long, slow stare that he learned from his father, and Adam breaks after only a few seconds, glancing down and away and fiddling with the end of his reins. 

"Adam. I don't recollect telling you to saddle that horse."

"Yeah, but." Adam picks at the cloth on his trousers, then looks back at Chris. "But what if it's Uncle Buck again?"

"Knowing him, it probably is."

***

Chris slows them down to a jog when he hears the gunshots, and then down into a walk when he sees the town's sorry excuse for a sheriff gallop past them on old Jim Paulson's horse. It's trouble, for sure, and the ancient fear for Adam sends a cold shock running down his spine.

"Get on home," he tells Adam. 

"Pa."

"Get, boy," he says again, harsher than he means to, but he doesn't want Adam anywhere near this. The crack of gunfire, the hooting, the sound of drunken men making trouble -- it's a familiar echo of his past, a past he still can't outrun, and he knows that there's something terrible occurring in town, something worse than the usual drunks making trouble.

Adam stares at him a moment, then lifts his chin, and Chris has his hands on Fancy's reins before Adam can do more than bring his heels down.

"Ain't going home, Pa," Adam says, and Chris knows that the minute he lets go of Fancy, his boy is going to be galloping straight towards trouble. Adam is his son, through and through, and not for the first time Chris spares a guilty thought for the hell he must have put his parents through. He doesn't have much time for thoughts, though, not right now, not when there's someone raising Cain in his town. 

"Fine," Chris says. "But you stay right behind me, boy. I mean it."

Adam nods, and Chris lets Fancy go. He urges Rattler into a trot, back stiff and belly full of unhappy tension. He gets into the heart of town right as the commotion begins to leave it, just in time to see Mary pick herself up off the ground. Outrage fills him -- outrage at the lowlife who'd dare attack a woman, outrage at the cowards who let this happen. 

"Mary, you okay?" he says as he dismounts -- no sense being seen as a target by the stragglers, and a man on the ground is less threatening than a man on a big, black horse. "What's going on?"

"Chris—" Mary begins, but then Adam interrupts her, shouting, "I'll go find out Pa!"

"Adam, you—" Chris manages to say, but Fancy is already gone, pivoting agilely around before Chris can do more than turn towards his son. 

"Chris," Mary says again, wild eyed and frightened. "Chris, you've got to stop them."

"Goddamn him," Chris says, one foot already in the stirrup, Mary and her troubles a distant noise in his mind. "Boy doesn't know—"

And then Adam is there, practically glowing with the excitement of it all. 

"Pa! Pa!" he shouts as Chris grabs Fancy's reins, jerking them hard enough to make the horse snort and toss her head and give him an accusatory, whale-eyed stare. "Pa, it's Nathan!"

"Nathan? Mary, what the hell is going on here?"

"I've been trying to tell you. They're trail herders from Texas. They say Nathan killed their boss, but it was gangrene. They're going to lynch him, Chris!"

"Pa, we gotta—" Adam begins, and then stops, his face suddenly paling and his breath coming in wheezes. "We gotta—"

"Yeah, I hear you son. You just breathe," Chris says, gentle like. He hands Mary Fancy and Rattler's reins, and she nods at him, ever so slightly. "Which way?"

"Cemetery," Mary says. Chris nods and heads down the road. 

Watson's new swamper is already standing at the gate when he gets there, Winchester slung over his shoulder. Chris feels his mouth run dry and sour at the sight -- he'd pegged the man as something dangerous when the swamper first arrived a week ago and had held nothing more intimidating in his hands than Watson's shop broom. Now, with a gun in his hands, Chris is more certain than ever that the man is trouble for sure, and while he's right glad the trouble is on his side, he's still wary. It's been Chris's experience that trouble has a way of multiplying, and coming at you from the side you least expect; and he reckons he's due for some trouble, since he hasn't given in to the dark despair, to the directionless anger that still lurks in the blackness behind his eyes for at least three months. Still, a second gun will be helpful, and he reckons there's still time to reason with the cowboys, convince them to end this peaceably. He's just about to warn the cowboys off when the swamper swings the rifle down off of his shoulder and puts a round into the lead cowboy's leg. 

"Reckon you fellers might want to reconsider things," the swamper says into the stunned silence. He nods to Nathan and adds, "Man you're 'bout to lynch is the only one in these parts who can patch that up for you."

"Hell and damn," Chris mutters under his breath, and loosens his gun in its holster. Them cowboys don't seem the kind to take kindly to being shot at, and he doubts even a bullet hole will keep them from a lynching when their blood is up. He reckons they'd have hanged Nathan even without the excuse of the dead man; even out here, there ain't nothing a bunch of good ol' boy drunks like more than to string up a former slave.

"You're as dead as this darkie, boy," one of the cowboys shouts, and he whips his gun out and fires. 

The cowboy is fast, but his aim is lousy. The shot goes wild, missing both Chris and the swamper by miles. Behind him, someone screams, and then Chris hears Adam's voice, high and shocky, and the world goes red, then white-cold. He ducks down behind a headstone as a cowboy fires at him again, and puts two cowboys down fast, then a third. A wild shot zips past his ear, a high pitched whine that makes his heart beat faster in excitement, and another pings off of the headstone beside him the rocky shards peppering his face with a dozen tiny scratches. He doesn't let the pain distract him, though, and he shoots the fourth cowboy as the man's trying to mount up and run away. His bullet hits the cowboy square in the back, and it doesn't feel good to shoot a man in the back, but he doesn't care right now. Swamper's got another one down, and he's busy trying to shoot down the rope wrapped around the tree limb before Nathan chokes to death. Chris gets the man trying to kill the swamper, and by the time he's done the swamper has Nathan down on the ground and has killed the cowboy trying to hide behind the body of the dead man who started this whole mess. 

Chris takes a deep breath and turns around, already dreading what he fears he'll see. There's still one bullet left in the chamber, and if his boy is dead Chris ain't sure if he's going to use that bullet on himself, or the swamper for starting this mess, or Mary for getting him involved, or if he'll just start shooting at the world because he can't shoot God. 

"Adam," he calls out, voice hoarse and quavering. 

"I'm over here," Adam says, and he's dusty but unhurt. He's looking disgruntled, though, and he's glaring at some kid in a second-hand suit, a band new gun belt, and what might have been either the grime of travel or the beginnings of a patchy beard dirtying his face. "This son of a bitch pushed me down in the dirt. I didn't get to see nothing."

"What've I said about swearing?" Chris says, but his heart ain't in it. He's shaky with relief, and he turns to the kid, who stares back at him with a mulish expression. 

"Kid coulda been killed, way those guys were shooting," the kid says. 

Chris tugs the brim of his hat and he's about to offer to buy the kid a shot of whiskey when there's a meaty thud from behind him. He turns back around and there's a cowboy with a knife in his back. 

"Someone want to pull that knife out and cut me loose?" Nathan says.

***

They convene in the saloon, he, Nathan, and the swamper -- the kid too busy chasing down the stagecoach and his luggage to hear Chris's invitation -- and Chris knows he's not the only one who could do with a strong drink. 

"Whiskey," Chris says, tossing down a coin. "And milk for my boy."

"Pa," Adam whines, but he takes his milk quietly for all that. 

"Chris," Chris says to the swamper. "That's my boy, Adam."

"Vin," the swamper says. "Vin Tanner. You the law in these parts?"

"Nope. Just a concerned citizen." Chris knocks back his drink and taps his glass on the bar for another.

"Get the doc another too," Vin says to Levi.

"Ain't no doctor," Nathan says. "Just try to heal folks is all."

"Better'n can be said for most doctors," Vin says, then pauses with his glass halfway to his mouth. He turns, and Chris turns with him, for he's seen the same thing in the saloon's mirror. Can't say he's too happy 'bout what he sees neither -- ain't usual for folks from the rez to come down to town, and the way these two are looking they can only be bringing more trouble. 

"We want to hire you," the older one says.

"Don't hire, just sell," Chris says. His heart's still racing from the fight and the devil in him is still glorying in the sharp tang of gun powder, and he knows these old men are offering him a fight -- and that old devil in him wants to fight so much now. But he ain't that man anymore, so he sets his shoulders and lowers his head like Two Bits when he's feeling particularly ornery, and twists their words to suit his better nature. "Unless you're talking 'bout Two Bits. Stud fee on him is twenty-five dollars, cash or barter. And he's a damn fine jack, so he's worth it."

"We want your guns, not your animals." 

"Sorry. I'm a rancher, not a gunslinger." Chris turns back to the bar. He can feel the old Indian's stare burning into his neck, and the disappointment radiating from Nathan. Ain't his fight, though, or his job. 

"I told you," the old black man says. "These people won't help us."

"Why do you need guns anyway?" Nathan asks. "Somebody bothering you?"

"They call themselves the Ghosts of the Confederacy," the black man says. "They attacked us yesterday, took food, clothing -- anything they wanted -- and they'll return in six days to take more. They're threatening our village, our families; we have no weapons, no way to fight back. You do."

"War's over," Chris says. "Been over for more'n five years, now."

"They don't know that," the old Indian replies.

"You paying?" Vin asks. In the saloon's mirror Chris sees the old man nod and pull out something golden from a pocket. He hands it reverently to Vin, who weighs it in his hand, then passes it off to Levi who puts it on his scales.

"Thirty-five dollars. Give or take," Levi says. 

"It may not seem like much, but it's all we have," the old man says. "Please."

"They're real desperate if they're asking for a white man's help," Vin mutters to him. "And that ain't no ordinary ornament they're offerin'." 

"Ain't my fight," Chris tells him. 

"Civil war wasn't the Seminole's fight, but they put themselves on the line for many an escaped slave. Took us in when no one else would. Taught us a thing or two. Taught _me_ a thing or two 'bout how to save the dying, 'bout how to live as a good man, an honorable man," Nathan says, looking pointedly at Adam, a damned underhanded thing to do in Chris's opinion. He knows he owes Nathan more than he could ever pay the man, but damn it, it ain't fair to use a man's son against him. "For thirty-five dollars, they can have my life for a week. Hell, they could have it for a dollar."

"I ain't planning on selling my life so cheap," Chris says, in a tone that's sharper than maybe it would've been had Adam not been there. But he's weakening because Nathan's right. It doesn't matter that it's not his fight. Hell, it doesn't even matter that Nathan's a dirty, manipulative bastard, or that despite what his better sense is telling him deep in his heart Chris knows that he wants this fight. All that matters is that there are things in this world that Chris knows are right and wrong -- knows with a bedrock certainty -- and picking on the weak is wrong.

Vin gives him a look that says he sees right through Chris, but he doesn't press the issue. He slugs back half of his whiskey instead and says, "Got paid five dollars a week at the hardware store without anybody shooting at me." He grins, just a little, and adds, "Damn good thing I didn't reckon on dying with a broom in my hand." 

"Well I don't reckon on—" Chris begins, but Adam tugs on the sleeve of his coat and interrupts him.

"Pa," Adam says, quietly. "What these Ghosts're doing. Ain't right, is it?"

And it ain't. It ain't and Chris is nearly dizzy with the pride and shame that wash over him. Pride that he's done something right by his boy, that he's taught Adam that you don't take from them that haven't got anything, and you don't bully them that are already down; shame that it takes his boy to remind him of this fact. 

"All right," Chris says at last, and he takes the golden amulet. "How many 'Ghosts' are there?"

"Would twenty scare you?" the old Indian asks. 

"Twenty men, huh?" Chris thinks about the odds thirty-five dollars will buy them. They ain't good, but he's faced worse, and he can't back out now. Not with Adam here. Not with his own conscience eating at him for shooting a man in the back neither. "Well, all right. We'll be there tomorrow afternoon."

The two old men nod and leave. Chris looks down at the small bit of gold, then back up to Vin and Nathan. "Five dollars a head. That'll give us seven men."

"And where're we gonna find hired guns who'll work for five dollars?" Vin asks.

"I know of one," Nathan says. 

"Me too. If we can get him out of bed." Chris sighs and claps Adam on the shoulder. "Come on. Let's go round up your Uncle Buck."

***

It ain't hard to find Buck. Everybody knows that Billy Atkins is doing a stretch in Yuma and Ettie Atkins ain't the kind of woman who keeps an empty bed for long. He sends Vin up to play the angry husband and waits for Buck around the side, where the window to Ettie's room overlooks the alleyway. Ain't long before Buck's falling off the roof in only his union suit, his clothes and gun clutched to his chest. 

"Hi Uncle Buck," Adam says. "Why'd you fall off the roof?"

"Well hey there buckaroo!" Buck says, and he scoops Adam up into the kind of twirling hug Adam loves but Chris is too afraid to give. "Me and Miz Ettie were playing a game." He grins at Chris, utterly unrepentant as always, and adds, "Your pa'll explain it to you."

"Pa don't tell me nothin'," Adam says, and Buck laughs and puts him down. He hugs Chris tight, clapping him on the back, like they ain't seen each other in months, when, really, it's just been a week or two.

"Well, pard, what's brought the two of you to town?" 

"They was gonna hang Nathan!" Adam exclaims. "Didn't you hear 'em?"

"That's what the fuss was? Me and Miz Ettie were right in the middle of—"

"He doesn't need to hear that, Buck."

"Don't need to hear what?"

"Later, Adam," Chris says, and to Buck: "We got a fight brewing. You interested?"

"This a paying thing?"

"Five dollars," he says. "Total."

"Shoot. The odds?"

"Three, maybe four to one."

Buck grins and laughs. "Like old times, huh? Sounds like our kind of a fight."

"He with us?" Vin asks. He moves damn quiet, especially on these old boards, and he stands closer than Chris would like. Man's still trouble, and for all that Chris is neck deep in the trouble, that doesn't mean he has to like it. Doesn't mean he has to invite it into his space, into his life. Into Adam's life. And he doesn't like the way the man can read him, anticipate his moves, handy as that is in a fight. Stranger shouldn't be able to do something like that, and it makes him nervous in a way he ain't proud of. Fighting with Vin had been…well. There were a whole lot of words for what it had been, but tempting was probably the best one. Fighting with Vin had made him feel like the kid he'd been back when he first came out here -- all hot headed and eager to make a name for himself and living solely for the exhilaration of cheating death. 

And it'd been a damn long time since fighting felt like dancing on the edge of a knife, since it was intoxicating in its own right and not just a way for Chris to make the world that took his wife feel just a little bit of his pain. Been a damn long time since he'd found joy in violence. Been a damn long time since he let himself be that man. 

It'd be far too easy to see Vin as a friend, and Chris doesn't want friends like him. Not now, not when he's all Adam's got in the world; not when he's trying to be better than the man he knows he is. 

Buck eyes Vin, and Chris can see him doing the same calculations, coming to the same conclusion. "He with you?"

"Yup," Chris says, and he sees Buck reassess again, recalculate what kind of trouble Chris is asking him to step into. 

"There gonna be ladies?" Buck asks.

"I imagine so."

"I imagine I'm in then," Buck says, and grins his old, wild grin.

***

Chris is still debating whether or not he should have Buck take Adam back to the ranch when Buck joins them on his dappled gray. He's decently clothed, at least, and doesn't look at all annoyed that Chris interrupted his time with Ettie. Still, there's a twinkle to his eyes that Chris doesn't like -- he reckons if he leaves Buck and Adam alone now, Adam's going to hear all about the time Chris and Sarah ended up being joined by a rather insistent bull while they were courting in a haystack, and no boy needs to hear that about his parents. 

"So," Buck says quietly as Chris nudges Rattler into a walk and leads them out of town, "this paying thing gonna be just you, me and Tex over there?"

"Nope," Chris says. "Nathan too."

"And?"

"And Josiah," Chris says, because he's as sure as anything that that's where Nathan headed when they split up outside the saloon. It makes sense, of course, since Josiah's the only other man in town Chris can think of who'd be crazy enough to take on this fight for five dollars.

"Josiah?" Buck says. "Ain't he the one who—"

"Yup."

"And didn't he—"

"Yup."

"And ain't he the reason Luis has that limp of his?"

"Buck, you know who the man is, why the hell're you asking me this?" Chris asks.

"Oh I know who he is all right," Buck says, grinning widely. "I just wanted to make sure you did."

Chris just shakes his head and spurs Rattler into a trot. He knows exactly who Josiah is, of course. Four Corners isn't that big of a town that the presence of a mad priest rebuilding the abandoned church out in the desert could go unnoticed or unremarked upon. Mary had run three separate stories on Josiah within the first two months he'd been in town, and that had been before Josiah'd taught most of the town children how to swear in Hindi. Chris had actually been rather kindly disposed towards Josiah for that little feat, if only because it got most of the town folk to talk about something other than the sad fact Adam was growing up without a mother. Of course, that had also been before Adam had started carrying around a pair of gold coins -- "just in case" -- and had nightmares about an endless river and a hooded figure poling a bleached-bone boat. 

He slows Rattler down to an easy walk as they approach the ruined church. Chris still remembers the last time he rode out here, hell bent on beating an explanation for his son's nightmares out of Josiah's hide, and being greeted by a rock the size of a big man's fist hurtling at him, giving him a glancing blow to the head. He doesn't think they're in any danger now, not with Nathan having braved whatever strange mood the madman happens to be in today, but with Josiah it always pays to be cautious. He's still a little nervous when he sees that Josiah's just stacking rocks, for that's how it started last time, and he can't help but be both disappointed and relieved when it becomes clear that Nathan's had no luck persuading him about the righteousness of their cause. 

"Should've brought the whiskey," Chris calls out to Nathan, one wary eye still cocked on Josiah. 

"Wouldn't've done a damn thing. He's made up his mind. Says this is his penance."

"For what?" Buck asks. 

"Well, word is he's killed a lot of men." Nathan shrugs. "He's a hard man to persuade."

Chris snorts. Hell, he'd have believed Josiah killed a man after the first time he'd been called in to lend that sorry excuse of a sheriff a hand in bringing Josiah in during one of his rages. It'd been like trying to take in a drunken bear; worse, actually, because they could've just shot the goddamn bear. Not that a sober Josiah was any easier to deal with. Hell, he'd been dead sober for at least half of the antics he'd gotten up to in the eight months he's been in town. The only real difference is the drink just makes his crazy ranting a mite less understandable, which is no kind of blessing in Chris's opinion. Drunk or sober, Josiah has a strong voice and a lot of truly outlandish tales, and is just the right kind of crazy to attract the admiration of every last damn kid in town. 

"Howdy Josiah," Adam calls out. Josiah pauses in sorting the rocks to give Adam a nod. 

Including Adam, Chris thinks sourly.

"Adam." Josiah wipes some sweat from his brow, and his gaze goes distant, contemplative. "Adam is a good name. First man was named Adam, and he named all God's creatures. Named the buffalo and the horse and the coyote. Named the crow. God gave them form, but Adam gave them meaning. There's an awful lot of power in the naming of things." He looks at the pile of rocks, then back to them. "Don't got time for stories today, Adam."

"They almost killed Nathan today," Adam says. 

"That a fact." Josiah looks at Nathan. "'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.' But I don't reckon He'll mind a little help in that department."

"If you're looking for vengeance, we can promise you a hell of a fight," Vin says. 

"Hell?" Josiah says. He looks around, at this half-finished church that no one will ever worship in, and the scrub surrounding it. "Already been there. Besides, man should get his own house in order first, before he goes around setting another's to rights."

Nathan sighs and mounts his bay. "Well, maybe he'll change his mind tomorrow."

***

"What'd I tell you 'bout going out there?" Chris says to Adam. "Man ain't right in the head."

"Josiah's just a little odd," Nathan says. "Ain't no real harm in him." He pauses for a moment, clearly remembering how he'd had to stitch up Levi after Josiah threw him through the saloon's big glass window, and adds, "Not to kids, anyway. Worst he can do is give Adam a bit of religion."

"I can go where I like," Adam says. "And talk to who I like. If you can do it, I can do it."

"Damn it boy -- " Chris says, and then he hears the gunshot.

His first reaction is _Now what?_ Can't be any more Texas cowboys left, and after today he reckons there ain't many folk left in town looking to court trouble. When there ain't any more shots following, he reckons he's right and this ain't a fight -- at least, not yet. He nods when Vin inclines his head towards the saloon, and they all dismount. 

"You wait here," he tells Adam. "I mean it this time."

"Pa—" Adam begins, but stops when he sees Chris's face. "Fine."

Chris nods, and he heads inside with Buck, Nathan, and Vin. There's some kind of shooting contest going on -- a cowboy against a man in a fancy coat. Chris can't help the frown that appears on his face. More trouble if Chris is any judge; that flash looking bastard ain't half as drunk as he's pretending to be. Not that the cowboys can tell, Chris reckons. Flash bastard's accent ain't as thick as some he's heard, but it's thick enough that his slow, liquid drawl might make him sound like a man three sheets to the wind to ears unaccustomed to his speech.

Of course, ain't no voice in the world that can make up for the obviousness of his act. Chris reckons that he's just damn lucky the cowboys are at least as half as drunk as they think he is. 

"This should be," the flash bastard drawls out, grinning like a drunken fool who thinks he has the upper hand, "a piece of cake." 

His shot goes wide, of course, and the cowboys laugh. Chris hears Vin's soft snort of derision for their blindness and though he ain't inclined to agree on much with Vin, he's with the man one hundred percent on this. The cowboys are damn fools, and damn blind at that, to think they're gonna get any money out of the flash bastard. 

"Double or nothing," the flash bastard says, pulling his second gun free from his shoulder holster, and Chris's estimation of the man rises. The man is carrying some decent guns. Hell, Chris reckons there's a whole bunch of folk who'd kill to own that .44 Remington revolver the flash bastard fired earlier -- it's the latest model, with the top strap, which Chris knows for a fact costs nearly as much as a decent horse -- and that cut down Colt. A new model, Chris reckons since he doubts the flash bastard would go for some second-hand piece. And those Army Colts were damn desirable, what with all that fancy etching along the cylinder, even before they were converted to fire cartridges instead of balls.

That's a damn expensive set of guns, though they ain't especially fancy looking. Durable, too, the kind of weapons an officer would wear, though the man doesn't look like any kind of veteran. Still, a man who owns guns like that is a man who knows how to shoot. And a man who knows how to shoot, who's dressed as sharp and fine as the flash bastard is -- and who's waving around money like he is -- is a man too smart to miss his mark because of an empty whiskey bottle on the floor, especially one that he knocked off the table to begin with.

"It's your money," the lead cowboy says, and he grins at the rest of the men at the table. "Get ready to duck, boys!"

Chris can see the exact moment when the con ends and the flash bastard shows his true hand. Man's got good aim, and he holds his weapon with the assurance of one who ain't afraid to use it. Chris doesn't like the man's methods, but they need men who can fight -- even cheats and gamblers like this one. Five to one ain't the worst odds he's seen before, but they're damn close. And it doesn't look like this fella's gonna be wanting to tarry long in town. Not with his marks realizing his ruse and getting nasty.

"You sure sobered up quickly, mister," the lead cowboy growls as he stabs a big Bowie knife through the money and into the scarred wood of the bar. The flash bastard sensibly leans away, but not far enough, and Chris can see that for all the man's smarts when it comes to shooting, he ain't got the sense to run when he can. 

"Must be the desert air," the flash bastard says, smirking at the cowboy like it's all some giant joke. 

"We don't take kindly to bein' hustled," the cowboy says, pulling the knife out of the bar and using it to back the flash bastard up against the wall. "Let's see how good you can shoot with one eye."

Beside him he feels Vin shift and loosen his gun in its holster. Chris grimaces a little, and does the same. He ain't happy about being dragged into another fight, but he reckons if they don't stop this now, it's bound to spill out into the street -- and what with that drunken bastard who called himself a sheriff having run off, there ain't no one else to make sure it doesn't spill from the street into people's homes. 

Doesn't look like they need to do anything, though. Flash bastard's got some nice moves, using the cowboy's knife like that to bring down the chandelier. He's got a solid punch on him too, and the cowboy goes down like a pole-axed heifer. 

Chris leans back against the bar -- careful to avoid the spot where Nathan's spilled his beer -- and watches the man collect his winnings. The flash bastard tips his hat to Levi and says, "Sorry for the mess."

Chris snorts and turns his attention back to the cowboys. The ornery fella is raising his gun, aiming to shoot the flash bastard in the back, Chris reckons, and it's clear that Levi has his doubts about the accuracy of the drunkard's aim, given the haste with which he ducks down below the bar. Chris is about to pull his gun free of its holster -- he knows he can take the cowboy down before the man can fire off a shot -- when the flash bastard makes an odd motion with his right arm and a tiny derringer pops out into his hand. He whips his arm around his body and fires behind him, winging the sore loser using nothing more to guide his aim than the man's reflection in the cracked mirror behind the bar.

"Only got one shot left in that pop gun," the cowboy says, holding his bleeding hand.

"Well then," the flash bastard says, eyes cool and hand steady as he makes his way towards the door, "you'd best discuss amongst yourselves which one of you is going to die." 

"Nice shot, pard," Vin tells the flash bastard. And it was, too, a nice hit using the mirror. Man knows how to handle himself; well he would, given how bad he is at acting. Can't be the first time one of his marks got violent upon realizing he'd been fleeced. 

"Dreadful," the man drawls as he sidles down the bar. "I was aiming to kill him, but the mirror was cracked."

"First shot was louder than the others. That means it was real," he tells the flash bastard in an undertone when the man draws even with him. His voice is low, and though is words are neutral his tone is not, and it contains the warning he doesn't say: Chris won't abide cheats in his town, just in case the flash bastard is foolishly thinking of staying. "Other five shots were blanks."

The flash bastard licks his lips and glances at him, eyes flickering to Chris and then back to the angry cowboys. In the same low tone he says, "Well, sir, I abhor gambling and as such leave nothing to chance."

Man's got style, Chris has to give him that. Style and a ballsy bravery that Chris can't help but admire. He reacts quickly too, and right now Chris reckons that makes up for the cheating side of things. Anyway, can't hurt to have a man who makes his own luck on their side against the odds they'll be facing. "Looking for guns to protect an Indian village. You interested?"

"What's the pay?"

"Five dollars a man," Chris says, slipping the gold amulet out of his pocket and showing it to the flash bastard.

The flash bastard snorts. "Five dollars won't even cover my bullets." He flicks his eyes towards Nathan. "Would, uh, would he be riding with you?"

"Yup."

"Not interested," he says.

"Reckon you oughta be leaving town anyway," Vin says, and the way he says it makes Chris think the man knows a thing or two about leaving town in a hurry.

The flash bastard takes another look around the saloon and the angry, armed men in it. "I'll sleep on it," he says, as if he's got real options other than beating a fast retreat out of town.

"Livery, tomorrow at dawn," Chris says, and he smirks, just a little. "If you live that long."

***

"I want you to mind what the Potters tell you," he tells Adam the next morning as they head into town. 

"Pa, can't I come?"

"There's gonna be killing in that village, Adam. I don't want you getting hurt." He fixes Adam with a steely glare. "So don't be riding after me, hear?"

"Yes Pa," Adam says, and Chris almost believes him. 

Still, he takes Fancy with him when he heads to the livery, and tells old Hobson, "She doesn't leave for love or money, hear?"

"Sure thing, Chris," Hobson says. He takes Fancy's reins and runs an appreciative eye over her. "When you gonna sell her to me? My Red Eye'd be a great stud for her. Have the prettiest foals this side of the Rockies."

"When you've got something worth offering," Chris says, because there ain't no chance in hell that he'd let Hobson's stud anywhere near Fancy. That was a mean tempered son of a bitch horse, no two ways about it, and parrot mouthed too. "I'm just boarding her for now."

"Heard you're heading out towards that Indian village. Reckon you'll be gone long?"

"Reckon things'll be over soon," Chris says. "One way or the other."

He touches his hat brim to Hobson and heads outside, where the others are waiting for him. Flash bastard isn't there, but Vin's already mounted up and chewing on a piece of bread. He nods to Chris, an insolent smirk on his face, slouching slightly in the saddle but perfectly balanced. Chris checks his tack one last time before swinging up onto Rattler and nodding back. 

"Wish we had a few more men," he says. 

"Fewer ways to split that huge pot," Vin replies.

Buck laughs at that and says, "Looks like you're gonna have to shoot straight for once, ol' pard." 

"I ain't the one who can't hit the broad side of a barn with a six-pound cannon," Chris says, then halts Rattler and looks up at the sound of a horse galloping towards them. It's the kid from yesterday, the one with the second-hand suit, only now he's got a brand new horse to match his brand new guns. Both kid and horse jump the split-rail fence marking the edge of the livery's yard, all young enthusiasm and speed untempered by reality. Kid's nervous, but masking it with bravado. Got a good handle on his horse and a good eye for horseflesh, too. Few years out here, with the desert wind to round down those rough edges, and the boy might make something of himself. 

Kid tips the brim of his derby to them and says, "I hear you fellas are headed for a fight. My name is JD Dunne and I can ride." He turns his horse in a tight circle, a quick front-back pivot. He grins at them as he and his horse return to their original position and cocks his outside leg up and across his horse's withers. "And I can shoot," he adds, flipping a white-handled Colt from its holster on his belt and firing a shot off at the livery sign. The sudden _bang_ of the gun spooks his horse, who rears up with an outraged _neigh_ , and the kid goes flying backwards, landing in the dust with a loud _umph_. 

"And he can fly!" the flash bastard crows as he rides up. 

The kid's horse barrels past them, knocking the kid into the water trough, before jumping back over the rail. 

"Why didn't you grab my damn horse!" the kid shouts at the flash bastard as he runs past, as angry -- and ruffled -- as a wet rooster. 

"So," Chris says to the flash bastard. "You made it."

"Well I couldn't stay away. Not once I saw I was riding with a genuine celebrity." The flash bastard shakes out the newspaper he holds in one hand and reads, in a declamatory manner, "'The streets ran red with the blood of twenty men yesterday as long-time resident and notorious gunslinger Chris Larabee turned our quiet town into a shooting gallery.'"

"Mary," Chris growls. 

"She got you again, Chris!" Buck laughs. "You two run hotter'n a tea kettle and make twice as much noise!"

"Ain't funny, Buck," Chris says. He turns his horse and takes off down the street towards the _Clarion_ 's offices. 

Mary doesn't look at all surprised to see him when he slams through her door. In fact, given her stiff and upright posture, Chris rather suspects she'd been waiting for him to come storming in. 

"You've read it, I see."

"Town was full of drunken scum looking to lynch Nathan, Mary. I'd hardly call that 'peaceful'. And I ain't been a gunslinger in years. You know that."

"Chris, if I have to bend the truth to keep our town safe, and if the next bunch of 'drunken scum' decides to steer clear of here because if it, then it was worth the little black mark on your less-than-stellar reputation. Or would you rather attend Nathan's funeral? Or Harry Johnson's? Or Joe Hobson's?" She raises one eyebrow at him. "I know you worry about word of your misdeeds getting back to Adam, but I would think your drunken carousing would do you more harm than a bit of fiction in my paper ever could." She sniffs, primly, then adds, "Although I have no idea why you worry so much. It's not like your son is any kind of saint."

"That—" Chris begins to say, the first word in their well trod dance about whose son is the worst influence, but he stops himself in time. Billy is still a touchy subject, and one that Chris doesn't have time to get into, not today. Instead, he stares down at her, and she doesn't flinch back. Of course she never does -- hasn't since the first time she used his past as a shield for the town. He breathes in and takes all that anger he's feeling and pushes it away. 

"Someday Mary," he says, "that damn paper of yours is gonna bite you in the ass."

The flash bastard is waiting with the others when Chris exits the _Clarion_. The sunlight glints off of his gold tooth as he grins and says, "And so the esteemed celebrity exits the bastion of journalistic excellence."

"Listen, you son of a bitch, I just need your guns, not your mouth."

"Well, sir, my guns are not available without the rest of me." He sweeps his hat off his head and bows dramatically. "Ezra Standish. At your service."

"Chris," Chris says as he mounts up. "But you know that. Vin Tanner, Buck Wilmington, Nathan Jackson."

"Gentlemen," Ezra says, though his courteous nod doesn't extend to Nathan. "Shall we be off?"

"We got one more stop we have to make," Chris says. "Gotta go see a priest."

"Seeking God's blessing for this crusade?" Ezra asks.

Vin grins at him. "Reckon that blessing's only good if God can shoot straight."

***

Josiah is waiting for them, his horse saddled and patient and the both of them looking like they could stand and wait until Judgment Day itself. 

"Why'd you change your mind?" Nathan asks.

"Crows," Josiah says. 

"What crows?"

Josiah puts on his hat and grins. "Sign."

"What does that mean?"

"Death," Josiah says as he mounts his horse. 

"Whose?"

"Probably mine."

Nathan snorts and gestures at the ruined church. "What about all this?"

"Oh," Josiah says. "These stones will still be here." He takes a look around. "If I get back."

"Well," Vin says, offering his hand, "We can always use another good man."

"Good man?" Josiah laughs. "Don't know about that. But I can fight."

"Even better," Vin says. He looks to Chris. "We moving out?"

"Yup," Chris says. "Let's go."

***

It takes the morning to ride out to the village, though about half of that time is spent keeping themselves on the right track. Ain't no real road out there, and Chris reckons Vin was right about the Indians needing help -- man would be right desperate to walk all the way to town from way out here.

Of course desperate ain't the same thing as stupid, or trusting, so Chris sends Buck on up to scout the ridge above the village before they ride in; he doesn't really expect an ambush, but being careful never hurt nobody. 

"Reckon we should go in slow," Vin says to him as they approach the outskirts of the village. "Don't know 'bout you, but I ain't looking to sport an arrow any time soon."

Chris nods and they slow the horses down to a careful walk. He makes sure to keep his hands well clear of his gun as they come in as well, and he's right glad he did. The village is a damn sight, full of angry and suspicious people. Reckons it wouldn't take much to set them off. 

The old Indian and his black friend are waiting for them near the center of the village. Chris slows Rattler to a halt and nods at the men. 

"Welcome. We greet you with hostility."

Chris raises an eyebrow at that and looks back to the others. "I think he means hospitality."

"Nope," Vin says, looking around. "I think he means hostility." 

Chris grunts and dismounts; reckons Vin's right about that. He stretches his legs and waits for the old men to approach. It's damn hard to keep himself still, though, when it feels like he's walked right into swarm of angry bees.

"Some of our people find it hard to trust white men," the old Indian says. 

"And you?" Chris asks.

"Not impossible. Just…difficult." The old Indian smiles a little, as though this is some kind of real big joke. "I am Tastanagi. This is Eban. We are the elders of this tribe."

Chris nods and he's about to introduce himself and the others when Vin says, "You never told us they had a cannon."

Tastanagi looks at him, face passive. "You didn't ask."

"Hell," Chris mutters. "Where?"

Vin nods his head to an adobe house set off to the edge of the village, the whole structure a mess of broken bricks and wood, and a damn big hole right through the center of it. Chris frowns, and looks back at the others. He wouldn't blame them for backing out now -- not when there's twenty men and a cannon coming for them. But they don't move, not even the flash bastard, and Chris ain't sure he knows how to feel about that fact.

"Hey, boys!" Buck shouts, his voice breaking apart Chris's thoughts before they could be fully formed. He's got laughter skirting round the edges of his words, and Chris wonders, idly, what new joke is tickling Buck's funny bone. "Look what I found."

Chris looks up at the ridge, then curses when he sees Buck leading the kid down the narrow path, hands tied in front of him, with Adam perched securely on the kid's horse. He's at their side before Buck can do more than gesture with the rifle he's carrying, and he ain't sure who he's madder at -- Adam or the kid. 

"What did I say?" he asks Adam, not waiting until he has his son on the ground before tearing into him. "What did I tell you?"

"Pa, I—"

"You were supposed to stay with the Potters. I told you to stay with the Potters. Goddamn it boy, why can't you listen for once in your life?"

"Pa, I _had_ to come."

"You had to come. What was so hellfire important that you _had_ to come here?"

"Because every time you go away bad things happen!" Adam shouts. He's got tears in the corners of his eyes, and Chris can see that he's really scared, that he ain't just faking it. He's taking little huffing breaths, the force of his emotions clearly more than his tiny body can take. 

"Bad things happen," he says again, quieter this time. 

"Oh Adam." Chris grabs his boy and holds him tight, strokes Adam's hair. He doesn't know what to do. He can't promise the boy that bad things won't happen -- can't promise him that everything will be fine, because life ain't like that. He knows it and Adam knows it and there ain't no way of ever unknowing it now. 

He takes a deep breath and turns on the kid, who's looking away all embarrassed like. "You. Kid," he says. "What're you doing with my boy?"

"Kid stole my horse!" the kid says. "And my _name_ is JD."

"That true, Adam?"

"I just caught him, Pa," Adam says. "I didn't do nothin' else."

"You wouldn't give him back to me unless I let you come with me!" the kid -- JD -- exclaims. He turns to Chris, back straight and chin up in righteous protest. "He made me run after him for a mile. And I figured it'd be safer if I went with him then if he came up here on his own."

Chris sighs. More complications, more trouble, and, damn him, JD had done the right thing in the circumstances. Much as he hates to admit it, once Adam gets an idea in his head, there is little on this world that can shake him from it. Adam is here and unless Chris ties him to the saddle and rides herd on him all the way back to town, then locks him in a jail cell, he's here to stay.

"Well how the hell did you get here so quickly, then?" Buck says. 

"I _told_ you," the kid snaps back. "I can ride. I took the path around the ridge." He shifts his glare to Adam. "Would've been here a damn sight sooner if I hadn't had to go chasing after my own damn horse."

"Well, you should just ride on back to town now, JD," he says. 

"I came out here to fight," JD says. "I can help, if you give me the chance."

Buck snorts, and takes JD's hat off of his head. He looks it over once before tossing it to JD "Let me guess," he says, circling the boy, "you learned to ride in some fancy prep-school back East. Then you read a dime-store novel abut Kit Carson that got you all fired up and ready to take on the West as a gunfighter." He fakes the kid out once before tossing him the rifle, grinning at him all sharp and nasty. "That about right?"

"Go home, kid," Chris says. "You're not the type."

"I ain't a kid," JD says, voice thick and wavering with the force of his emotions. "I'm a man. And if a man comes to you because he respects you, because he'd be proud to fight with you, to work with you, this is how you treat him?"

"Hell, I got one kid that doesn't listen to me, I don't need another," Chris says. "Go on home, JD. This ain't your fight."

JD stares at him, then turns and mounts his horse. He rides out of the village in a cloud of dust and resentment, and Chris can't help but feel some relief that at last -- _at last_ \-- something has gone right today. 

"He is young and proud," Tastanagi says, and there's a wistful sadness in his voice. 

"Yeah? Well they can carve that on his tombstone," Chris replies, harsher than perhaps he should've. But he's rattled with Adam being here, and angry, and afraid for his son. 

"Well, I'm an expert on prayers for the dying," Josiah says. 

Ezra stares at the old priest for a long moment and then laughs. "Oh I like this guy. Lord help me, I like him." He grins broadly at the rest them. "Hell, I'm in it just for the laughs, if nothing else."

Chris grunts. Far as he can see, ain't much to laugh about, but he reckons it must take all kinds. "Well, let's get started. Only four days until they come."

"Less," Tastanagi says. "He's an old warrior. He will come early, to surprise us."

"Figures." Chris pushes his hat back off his head. "Adam, you go tend to them horses. Then you come find me, hear? No wandering off, or I swear I'll tan your backside so hard you won't be able to sit for a month of Sundays."

"Yes Pa," Adam says. He gathers the horses and takes them over to the little corral, talking quietly to Rattler and Romeo, Buck's gray gelding. Chris watches him go, then turns back to the old Indian. 

"So," he says. "What can we expect?"

Tastanagi leads him over to a small model of the village set out in the sand, and Josiah and Vin follow. The old man takes an arrow and draws a line in the sand. 

"His main force rode straight into the village." The old man draws another line. "Then he left some men here."

Josiah whistles appreciatively. "Man's a trained soldier." 

"That's good. Means he'll probably repeat himself." Chris pulls out a cheroot and lights it. He squints around the smoke at the little diorama.

"We should take the high ground," Tastanagi says. 

"Yeah." Chris puffs on his cheroot contemplatively, then points to another point in the sand. "If we can force him through this chokehold, we'll have him."

Behind him, one of the villagers says, "Set that hay over there." 

Chris stands up and looks over to where the villagers are unloading a rickety cart full of hay. 

"We may not have guns," the old man says, "but we have our ways of fighting."

"The Ghosts will give us the guns," Chris says.

***

Chris is helping the villagers knot cords for the big net they'll string across the chokehold when Adam runs up to him. 

"I got the horses all untacked, Pa," he says. "Now what?"

Chris runs an eye over his boy. Three years of midnight scares, of hot steam and strange herbs and spicy smelling liniments rubbed onto his boy's chest has made him an expert on his boy's breath. Adam's winded, but not badly so. Still, best he sit down now and catch his breath. Ain't no sense in causing one of his attacks out here, even with Nathan so close at hand.

"Go help Uncle Buck and them other kids stuff those old clothes full of straw," he says. 

"Uncle Buck's not over there," Adam says. 

Chris grunts. "Well, go help whoever it is that's keeping watch over them kids, then."

"Pa, can't I—"

"You decided to come out here, boy. You do the same thing every one of these kids is doing." He watches Adam trudge off to where the other kids are gathered, and almost calls him back once he realizes that it's Ezra who's in charge. But the flash bastard seems to be minding his manners; seems real good with them kids, too, given they way they're laughing and chattering at each other. Probably the best thing for them, right now. Keep their minds off of what's coming, keep their spirits up. 

Still, probably won't hurt to keep an eye on them. Ezra's trouble, no two ways about it, and the dangerous kind, the killing kind. Chris ain't about to abide any of that sort of trouble near Adam; leastways, not any more than Adam calls down upon his own head. 

Of course Ezra ain't the only trouble here, and Chris ain't thinking only of them crazy rebs and their cannons. He ain't too thrilled with the three armed strangers he's got with him -- well, two strangers and Josiah, who's strange in his own way. They may be good fighters, but he reckons they ain't good people. Not for Adam, anyway, and Adam seems to go out of his way to make friends with all the wrong sort of people. Well, except for Nathan, who's got more good in him than half a dozen men. And he reckons that Buck ain't really bad, when you get down to it, not any more than most men are. But them new guys ain't good for much but the fighting. They're too much like him, like he was, back before Sarah. Too much like him now, too, he suspects. Mary wasn't wrong about him and the drinking and fighting. Nor about how he worries of word of his doings getting back to Adam and undoing all the good that's in him, all the good that Sarah put in him. 

World doesn't need two Chris Larabees, he reckons.

In the back of his mind he registers the sound of a bullet ricocheting off of stone, but he doesn't think on what that means until he hears Adam shout. His head snaps up faster than a rattler's and he looks around wildly, looking for blood, listening for the shouting that doesn't come. There's just clapping, instead, and the noise of kids being kids.

His heart beats a little slower when he sees it's just Ezra holding up a card with a bullet piercing it straight through the center. For a moment, he thinks Ezra was doing another one of his damn sharp shooting tricks, but Vin's the only one with a gun out. Chris feels his teeth clench down hard around the butt of his cheroot, hard enough to break the wrapping and spread flecks of bitter tobacco across his tongue. 

If it ain't one trouble maker, it was bound to be the other. 

"Vin!" he hollers, standing up and striding over to where Vin's teaching the villagers to shoot. "Vin, you stupid son of a bitch, what in the hell do you think—"

And then Buck's there, grabbing hold of his arm and hauling him around, corralling him against a wall and out of sight of Vin and the villagers. 

"Buck, you don't get out of my way right now, I'm gonna break your goddamn nose."

"Easy, Chris, easy now." Buck holds up his hands placatingly, but he's got that hard look in his eyes, the one that Chris knows means Buck won't be backing down. "Why don't you tell me what this is all about?"

"That damn fancy shooting of Vin's coulda killed Adam."

"Weren't his fault, Chris. Bullet just ricocheted off like that. You know how these things go."

"Man's a killer, Buck, through and through."

"Well, reckon we need that right now." Buck pushes his hat back a bit and scratches at his mustache. "Now, you gotta calm down, Chris. I know you ain't happy 'bout Adam being here; can't say I'm happy 'bout it myself. But if you don't calm yourself down, you're gonna be fighting two wars soon, and you only got two guns to shoot."

"I don't care a damn if we need him or not, man ain't right in the head." Chris takes a deep breath, because he knows Buck is right about this. That shot wasn't any of Vin's doing, and he knows that. Knows, too, that his fear ain't really about the ricochet at all, but that Adam is here instead of back with the Potters. Here, where he can die; here, where he can see the monster that lives inside his daddy; here, with these killers and cheats and madmen and lord only knows what else. 

Still, knowing the truth doesn't do a thing about the fear in his heart, or the way he wants to take that fear out of Vin's hide. "You best get him out of my sight, Buck. Or I swear, I'm gonna kill him. I don't care how stupid that is. Man makes me jumpy as all hell."

"Reckon that'd be best." 

Chris looks over at where Ezra's sitting, his silver flask glinting in the sun, Adam gazing at him with adoration. He doesn't even want to know what that flash bastard's telling his boy.

"And do something about Ezra while you're at it. Ain't gonna see him filling Adam's head with nonsense that's gonna get him killed."

"That might be a mite difficult—" Buck begins to say, grinning his irrepressible grin, and then he sees the women. "Well now. The winds have blown, the clouds have parted, and out comes the sun! I knew you wouldn't disappoint me, you old dog."

He slaps Chris on the arm and struts towards Nathan and the village women. "Well, well. Now what do we have here?"

"Found 'em up at that canyon," Nathan says, then looks at the women. "Well, uh. More like they found me."

Chris sighs. He can feel a headache forming right above his eyebrows, a sharp and insistent pain that'll need way more than a few fingers of whiskey to ease. The girls are a problem, and one he just doesn't have the energy to deal with. He's just about to suggest Nathan take them back up into the hills when Eban pushes past him. 

"What're y'all doing down here?" he says, chest puffed out like an angry rooster. "Didn't I tell y'all to stay hid?"

"Is this not our village too?" the young woman at the head of the group says. "Why should we hide like rabbits while our grandfathers defend us?"

Buck grins at the girl, then at Eban. "I say we let them stay."

Eban glares back at him. "You touch my daughter, I promise I'll kill you."

Buck looks at the women, then back at the angry old man. "Uh. W-which one is your daughter?"

Chris manages to smile at that. Buck may no longer be able to help him with the Vin problem, now that there are women for him to chase, but at least he doesn't have to worry about another incident like that time in Moab. Took them two weeks to scrub the tar off their skin, and they'd both had to get a barber to shave their heads clean. Sarah had—

He clamps down on that memory as hard as he can, and blinks away the tears. Ain't got time to weep over the past, especially when Eban looks like he might just rip Buck apart with both hands. Chris steps forward, places himself between Buck and yet another angry father. 

"No harm will come to your women," he says, as soothingly as he can, and he shoots a glare at Buck as he says it. 

"Let them stay," Tastanagi says. He looks at the women, at the children gathered around Ezra, at the men gathered around Vin. "Rain is right. It is their home too."

Eban glares at them all, then grabs the girl -- Rain -- by the hand and drags her off to a small, wooden hut. Buck watches them go, then looks at the rest of the women. "You reckon she's his only daughter?" he asks. 

"For Eban, they are all his children," Tastanagi replies. 

"Right, but he ain't gonna kill me if I, you know, court one of the others. Right?" 

Tastanagi laughs, and Chris is struck yet again by the fact that so many of the wrinkles lining the old man's face are from joy, not tears. There's something profound about this fact, something that makes him envious and angry at the same time. 

"He is not the only father in this village," the old Indian says. "Nor," he adds, looking over to where Vin is standing, his rifle resting behind his neck and across both shoulders, "is he the only one who learned to fire a rifle today."

"Well, uh. All right then," Buck says, and he tips his hat to the remaining women, then sidles away.

Chris watches him go, then turns back to Vin. The man's face is inscrutable, but his eyes are wary, just barely crinkled at the corners. Chris can read the tension Vin is trying so hard to hide, and a part of him thinks the bastard is right to be so tense. But Buck was right -- there are men with a cannon coming. Ain't no time to be fighting two wars. 

"Vin," he says, as calmly as he can. 

"Chris."

"Reckon you might want to shoot them cans facing away from any big rocks."

Vin nods slowly. "Yeah. Reckon I could do that," he says.

He turns away and Chris narrows his eyes, thinking hard about the stranger before him. He still can't rightly get a handle on Vin, and this fact makes him nervous. Before now, he thought the man was a damn sight too eager to jump into a fray, for all that he's a reticent son of a bitch, and he wouldn't have blamed Vin in the least for punching him for his earlier words. Wouldn't have been surprised, neither, and maybe that's what he needs right now -- a good ol' brawl to punch out some of the fear that's still crawling in his belly. But seems like Vin's decided to be contrary and turn the other cheek, and for all that he's glad that Buck ain't prying the two of them apart, the fact that he ain't leaves Chris all awhirl, like his foot has come down on empty space where he'd expected solid ground. Besides, it ain't right to feel comfortable with a man like that, and it really ain't right to feel so comfortable around him when they've only known each other for a few days. Hell, it took him damn near four months before he felt truly comfortable around Buck, and Buck had saved his life when they first met; or if not his life, then at least kept him from being hit over the head with a bottle of whiskey.

He watches Vin take the men further out of the village. The rifle is slung over his shoulder in deceptively casual position, and Chris is damn sure most men would be fooled by Vin's stance into thinking he was nothing more than homesteader with a gun. But Chris reckons it'd take Vin less than a second to swing the barrel down and fire the weapon; he reckons, too, that Vin's done something like that more than once -- pretended a casualness to throw his enemies off balance. He can't help but admire that, because it speaks of a man who knows how to survive. 

Not that you can even rightly call Vin a man, Chris reckons. Vin's barely more than a kid, really, once you look past the way life has aged his face, and one that runs hot for all that he appears cold. And that, really, is the part of the problem. He doesn't know the man, doesn't know which way he'll jump, for all that they can read each other so well in the heat of a battle. 

Hell, he doesn't know more'n half of the men here, and that thought disturbs him. 

He reckons he needs to think on this some more, and near as he can tell there ain't nobody up on that bluff keeping watch. He should probably send Buck up there, just to keep him out of trouble. But he needs to be alone, right now, needs to step back and not be a leader for just a few hours. He ain't used to it -- ain't used to the pressure and the way they all look at him like they expect him to know the answers to everything, expect him to see them through the slaughter that's to come. Hell, even Buck's doing it, and Buck's never been a follower. Most times Chris counts himself lucky that he gets even a warning before Buck does something that lands them in the middle of a fight -- or running down Main Street with their britches round their knees and some angry husband with a shotgun chasing right after them.

"Adam," he shouts, looking around for his son. "Adam, get over here!"

Adam stands up from where he's been stuffing straw into the dummy men and comes over, looking a little wary. "Ain't done nothing, Pa," he says. "I've been real good. And that was a real neat trick Ezra did with the card!"

"I know, boy. I just want you near me."

"Thought you said I had to help out with the other kids," Adam said, although he was starting to look excited now. "This mean I don't? This mean you're gonna teach me to shoot?"

"Nope. Just means you're coming with me to go stand watch."

"But Pa—"

"Adam," Chris says, low and stern. "It's important."

Adam sighs and nods. "Ok Pa," he says.

They climb the long, twisty route up to the bluff -- slowly, for Adam's sake -- and Chris makes him drink a lot of water when they get to the top. He's huffing a bit, but his breathing is good, and the air is real clean up here, and sharp with all the scents of the desert. Chris sits down with his back against a sun-warm boulder and watches his son poke about the rocky plateau. Ain't too much up here, but it's got a clear shot down to the valley where the Ghosts will come, and a pretty good view of the village too. He looks down and watches the villagers prepare; watches what he supposes are his 'men' too, and he can't fault them for their work. Ain't nobody slacking off here, not even Ezra.

The sound of gunfire changes, and Chris looks down and over to where Vin is teaching the men to shoot. They got a couple of rifles now, and some of the men ain't too bad. Vin's walking among them, correcting a stance here, lowering an aim there. Man ain't bad at teaching and he seems real natural among the villagers, real comfortable and relaxed; different than he'd been in town. Ain't too many folks comfortable around Indians, even them that lives out on the rez and cause no trouble, and it makes Chris wonder about Vin. Man's got secrets that he carries deep in him, and Chris ain't inclined to trust a man who's got so much to hide. Hell, he reckons he'd trust Ezra before he'd trust Vin -- Ezra's a cheat, but he's honest in his cheating, and easy to read. 

He shifts his gaze from Vin to Ezra and watches the flash bastard direct the village children about. He frowns, unhappy with the mystery of the man, for Ezra is a mystery though of a different sort than Vin. With Vin, Chris knows that it's the easiness of his presence that makes Chris wary, his very clarity hiding the dangers within him. Dealing with Vin puts Chris in mind of being hunted by a mountain lion out in the brush, of that prickling sense of being watched without being able to spot the watcher. 

Dealing with Ezra, on the other hand, puts Chris in mind of the Ohio river, dark and opaque and where even the apparent hazards were often nothing more than a trick of the river to lead unwary travelers into deeper shoals. And in a way this makes Ezra an easier mystery to handle, for even if half of what he says is lies, at least it's lies Chris can recognize. It's the lies of civilization, the lies that Chris grew up in. Ezra's lies -- his wants, his motives -- are understandable, and that gives Chris pause. He's always considered himself a mostly honest man and Ezra is most emphatically not. The fact that he can so quickly decipher at least the outward seeming of the man leaves Chris strangely uncomfortable and oddly sad.

Down below Ezra picks up a small girl in a bright red shirt and puts her on his shoulders, spins her around to the delighted shrieking of the others. Chris smiles at the noise, and though he's sure that Ezra's affection for the children is but another trick, an artful con of some kind, he still can't help but feel kindly toward the man. He knows his judgment is being too greatly influenced by his own feelings -- for he has known evil men who were always kind to children -- but he can't help himself, can't help but think there's a powerful lot of good in a man who loves kids. 

Of course, this doesn't mean he's particularly thrilled that Adam's so taken with Ezra and his tricks. For all that he's familiar, in his way, Ezra is still dangerous and trouble, and since that horrible night Chris has done all he can to keep his son clear of both those things. Still, better Ezra and his flimflam than Vin and his guns, Chris reckons, and he turns his gaze away from the village and back out to the desert.

Adam eventually tires of looking around and comes to sit next to Chris. He's got a coin in his hand -- some old war penny -- and he's doing something with it; running it slowly up and down his knuckles. He's got his tongue out and he's concentrating hard; the coin falls from his hands as much as it dances across them.

"What're you doing, son?" Chris asks.

"Practicin'," Adam says, still concentrating fiercely on his fingers. "Ezra says I gotta improve my dextrity if I wanna be as good at cards as he is."

"That right," Chris says. 

"Yup." Adam looks up and grins. "Says he's gonna teach us how to play Poker tomorrow!"

Chris bites down on the words he really wants to say -- that he doesn't trust that snake charmer further than he can throw him and Adam would do well to steer clear of him -- and takes a breath. Reckons it's about time he admit that his boy is at least as stubborn and ornery as himself and contrary to boot. Up here, in the stillness of the empty desert, with death coming in few days time, Chris reckons there ain't no point in trying to pretend his son is anything other than who he is, anything other than the reflection of his father. Telling Adam to stay clear of Ezra'd just send him running right to Ezra, and he reckons there ain't no real harm in the boy learning Poker. It'll give the two of them something else to play at nights, besides Euchre or Backgammon. Anyway, what's Ezra gonna bet with? Rocks?

In fact, more Chris thinks about it, more he reckons it ain't such a bad idea. Ezra'll keep them kids' minds off of what's coming, sure enough. Which is a blessing, even if it's coming from the flash bastard.

"Well, you tell him I don't want it interfering with the work. Ain't got a whole lot of time to be messing around."

"Yes Pa," Adam says. He turns back to his coin, and Chris turns to face out toward the vast and empty land that stretches before him.

***

Nathan comes to relieve him as the sun starts to set, and Chris nods his thanks. Adam yawns, and stands up, shifts his weight from foot to foot. 

"Should be quiet," Chris tells Nathan. "I'll send someone up to spell you in a few hours."

"All right," Nathan says, and he looks around for a spot to settle. 

Chris turns to begin the walk back down to the village, then stops and turns back. Nathan's a good man, in all the ways a man can be good, and smart too. Chris reckons he's saved Adam's life at least a dozen times over the past few years, and he's got a good sense of things; a good sense of people. 

"Nathan," he says, not sure of how to ask the questions plaguing him. "I was wondering -" 

"Pa, I'm hungry," Adam says, loudly, interrupting him. 

"Just a minute," Chris says. 

"Aww Pa! Come on!" Adam tugs insistently on his coat sleeve and Chris sighs. Reckon he can talk with Nathan later.

"All right Adam," he says. "Let's go." 

It doesn't take them as long to get down as it did to climb up, but it's still late enough that there are cooking fires already burning in the village. There's a pot of something bubbling over the central one -- smells like venison stew, maybe -- and Vin and Josiah are sitting in front of it, talking quietly. They stop as he and Adam approach and Chris frowns. Something's brewing there, and Chris ain't sure what it is. 

"Vin, Josiah," he says as he ladles out a bowl of the stew for himself and another one for Adam. "One of you want to go spell Nathan in a few hours?"

"Reckon I'll do it," Vin says. He stretches out his long legs before him and goes back to eating, but not to talking. 

"Josiah, you got any stories for me?" Adam asks. 

"Well, now," Josiah says, rubbing his chin. "Reckon I might know a few." He puts down his bowl and takes a sip of something from a tin cup, then clears his throat. "Now, once upon a time there was a man named Oedipus. He was called that because when he was born, his folks pinned a stake through his ankles so he couldn't walk and told a shepherd to abandon him on a mountain top for the crows and the wolves and—"

"Adam," Chris says as loud as he can. "Go find Buck and tell him food's ready."

"But Pa, Josiah's—"

"I reckon Josiah's got more important things to do than tell you stories, too," he says. 

"Well," Josiah begins, then catches Chris's eye. "Reckon perhaps I do."

***

Morning comes and it doesn't bring no answers, or even a better sense of the men he's with. Ain't sure he feels any better 'bout them, for all that the rest of the night passed companionably enough. 

He looks around the village again and his eyes light on the corral. Chris has always reckoned that you can tell the worth of a man by how he treats his horse, and right now he has three men he doesn't know and three horses who might tell him a thing or two. Rattler whickers at him as he approaches the corral, clearly bored with standing around, and missing the rest of the herd.

"Easy boy," he murmurs to the big Morgan. "Ain't gonna be long now."

Rattler turns his head away and flicks one ear at Chris, clearly no longer interested in anything Chris might have to say now that it's clear they aren't going riding. He paws at the ground once then wanders off to investigate what's happening at the other side of the corral. Romeo looks up at the noise and then approaches Chris, clearly hoping for a treat of some sort. Chris scratches him absentmindedly on his chest and watches the other horses. Josiah's big sorrel is drowsing in the sun, one hoof cocked absentmindedly and ears flicking away the buzzing flies. Chris watches him for a while, trying to decide if the horse is truly as placid as he seems to be, or if he's as big and mean as his master can occasionally be; he's in fine condition either way, though, and Chris can't help but feel a little comforted by the fact that for all Josiah talks of death he clearly means his alone. Man may be ready to die, but no man who keeps his horse as fine and healthy as Josiah does is going to do something stupid to hasten that death.

The white-faced black Vin rides is pacing the perimeter of the corral, clearly unhappy with being penned in. When he notices Chris watching him he stops and looks him straight on, one ear still swiveled back towards the distant sounds of gunfire. Chris stares him down, tries to place his breed. He ain't one of the scrub horses that are a dime a dozen in these parts -- someone put some breeding into him, brought him up fine and handsome. He's got a glossy coat, free of spur marks, and the lash of a whip, and Chris is fairly sure Vin doesn't use a bit on him, doesn't force him in any way. It's clear he and Vin have a good bond, one of trust, and that makes Chris a mite easier. Horse like him doesn't trust easy, he reckons. Too proud, even though he's a geld, and he stands defiant and bold, four-square in the sun, coat so black it's almost blue. He was brought to the knife late, Chris reckons, like Rattler, and that gives Chris pause. He knows his horse through and through, but he doesn't know Vin's; doesn't know if White-Face is as sharp and dangerous as his owner. He's at least as contrary as Vin is, that's for sure, and Chris doesn't like the way he's eyeing the fence, doesn't like that he looks as though he has half a mind of jumping it, just because he can. He doesn't, though, and when Rattler wanders over towards him, White-Face drops his head and sniffs noses, before beginning to groom Rattler. Chris grimaces -- it just figures Rattler would decide to become best friends with Vin's mount. 

Romeo leans heavily against Chris's shoulder and whuffles in his ear. He begins to nibble on Chris's hair, clearly waiting for it to turn into something better tasting, like hay or oats. 

"Watch it, greedy," Chris says, pushing back against the horse. Romeo sighs, grassy and wet, and wanders away. This, apparently, was all Ezra's horse was waiting for, for he moves in and sticks his nose right into Chris's pocket. 

"Hey!" Chris says, and he pushes the horse's head away, half expecting to see the golden amulet dangling from the animal's mouth. It wouldn't surprise him in the least to learn that Ezra rode a pick-pocketing horse. The dark sorrel looks back at him with big, innocent eyes and snorts at him before mouthing the flap of Chris's coat pocket with a greater insistence. Chris pushes his big head away again, harder this time, and places his other hand against the horse's chest. The horse looks at him through its dark lashes and leans back in for another nibble, more to prove a point, Chris reckons, than anything else. Chris pushes again, and this time the horse follows the movement of his head with the rest of his body, turning and trotting a few feet away. He looks back at Chris -- coy and playful -- then snorts when he sees Chris isn't about to chase him, and kicks up both his back feet before tossing his head and joining Rattler and White-Face.

Chris watches the three horses socialize each other for awhile before shaking his head. He ain't learned much from that, except that Ezra's horse is as big of a pain in the ass as Ezra is, and clearly chosen at least in part for his flashy appeal rather than his endurance capabilities; the dark sorrel has the body of a sprinter, not a long-haul horse. And Vin's horse is some sort of well-bred mongrel, probably brought up out of Indian stock; no lineage, no studbook, nothing, for all that he's a handsome brute. 

He sighs and looks back over towards Josiah's geld, who's staring at him with half-hooded, unknowable eyes. Figures the only sane horse would belong to the crazy preacher. 

"Chris," Josiah says, and Chris starts and turns. 

"Josiah." He steps away from the corral and walks towards Josiah. "Ain't you building a wall?"

"Yup." Josiah nods down to the big stone he's carrying. "Ran out of stone."

Chris looks around and raises an eyebrow. Far as he can see, they got more stone than dirt 'round here. "Uh huh."

"Has to be the right stone," Josiah says and he places it on the top of his rock wall. "Wall doesn't work with the wrong sort of stone."

Chris nods and looks the wall over. Near as he can tell, one good kick from a determined horse and the whole thing'll come tumbling down. "Ain't you gonna use mortar, Josiah?"

"Rocks, like people, fit together. Put the right rocks in the right order and you got a damn fine wall." Josiah prods the wall with his foot and grins, in a slightly off-kilter fashion, when it doesn't move. He picks up another rock -- jagged and lumpy -- and places it on top of the rock he just laid. "Now see, that rock there, it ain't a pretty rock. Ain't a nice rock. But it fits with the one below it as tight as you like. Makes the wall strong to have that rock in it. Don't need no mortar to stick the two of 'em together, not when they fit so nice already. And maybe that jagged rock doesn't make the wall look pretty; maybe you don't want it there at all. But what would you rather have, Chris? A strong wall or a pretty one?"

Chris looks at the wall and considers Josiah's words. He knows what the preacher-man is really trying to say here, but he'll be damned if he'll acknowledge the underlying truth: that just because Vin is sharp and dangerous that doesn't mean he's evil. 

"Well," he says at last, "reckon that right now what I really want is a wall that'll keep them horses in line so we can kill as many Ghosts as possible."

Josiah grins his off-kilter grin again. "Good fences do make good neighbors, Chris."

"Yeah? What do we need to do to be bad ones?"

Josiah laughs at that, a low, deep chuckle, and goes back to stacking rocks. Chris watches him a while longer, then shakes his head. 

"'The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, but to find a friend worth dying for'," Josiah says, right as Chris is turning to go, and he winks at Chris as he says it. 

"And you think that's what you've found here?" Chris asks, more out of idle curiosity than any real desire to learn the workings of Josiah's mind. 

"I think that it's something to be found," Josiah says. He puts another rock onto his wall and wipes his forehead with his grimy bandana. "If you're open to looking for it, that is."

"And what if I don't want it?"

"Oh, I reckon it'll still find you just the same." Josiah straightens up and looks at his wall. "Friendship has a way of doing that."

Chris grunts and walks away. The man's crazy, and it doesn't pay to converse with the crazy. Still, he's already hard at work even though it's still dim down in the village, the sun just barely creeping up over the Eastern bluffs. There's light enough to see by, though, and that means it's more than past time for him to get Adam up and working. Even Ezra's risen by now, and if that ain't a sign that the day's well started then Chris reckon he doesn't know what is.

"Adam!" he shouts as he strides back up into the village. "Adam, time to wake up!"

He's almost to the door of the hut they shared last night before Adam appears, scrubbing at one eye with his fist and his borrowed nightshirt flapping around his knees. He looks small and pale this morning, and he coughs a bit before saying, in a raspy voice, "Pa I been up for _ages_."

"That a fact," Chris says, kneeling down before his boy. He tousles Adam's already messy hair, and checks the skin on his son's forehead and cheeks -- it's cool, and Chris can't remember if that's a good or bad sign. Adam coughs again, a dry, hacking cough, and that makes up Chris's mind. 

"You run along and help Nathan today," Chris says firmly. 

"Aww Pa! Ezra said he'd show us how to play Poker today! And I didn't get to see any more card tricks yesterday neither."

"Nathan needs your help too," Chris says. "Boiling bandages and, uh, making tinctures and liniments and the like." He trails off, unsure of what else goes into the healer's craft. 

"Pa," Adam whines, then yawns wide enough to split his face damn near in two. 

"Nathan," Chris says, then swats Adam gently on the backside. "After you eat and get dressed."

"Yes Pa," Adam says, and he turns back into the hut. Chris watches him start to dress, then heads down to the campfire where someone's got a pot of porridge slowly bubbling away. 

"He is your only child," Tastanagi says behind him, and Chris starts, hands going automatically to the butt of his gun. 

"Yeah," Chris says, once his heart's no longer thundering. "Lost his mama in a fire. Damn near lost him too."

Tastanagi nods. "It is hard, to lose a child," he says, and he looks so sad and lost that Chris has to look away, uncomfortable with the naked pain in the old man's eyes. He busies himself with ladling out two bowls of porridge for himself and Adam, but that doesn't take long at all. He's still casting about for some words to say -- though he doesn't know what words he can say, except that he reckons Tastanagi is a stronger man then him, because he thinks he'd just about die if he'd lost Adam too -- when Adam joins him, half the buttons on his shirt done up wrong and yawning so widely it's a wonder his head doesn't fall off. Chris is grateful of the excuse presented in his sleepy, messy son, and he's just about to kneel in front of Adam and fix his shirt when the shouting starts. 

"Imala!" one of the village men cries, "Imala!"

"He's come back," another says, and Chris looks over to the ridge where Buck's leading a prisoner down the slope, the kid in the brown suit right behind him. 

"Imala," Tastanagi whispers, voice half choked with unbelieving hope. 

That's all it takes -- a father's whispered prayer -- and Chris knows in an instant who the bound man is. He curses under his breath before shouting, "Buck! Let him go."

Buck stares hard at him for a minute, mouth open as if he's got something right sharp to say to Chris's command, then shrugs and pulls Imala's hands free from the rope shackles. 

"Imala," Tastanagi says, again, and he breaks into a shuffling run. "Imala! My son! I thought you were dead!" He grabs the young man in a crushing embrace, and though Chris can't see it, he knows the old man is crying. Chris looks away from the scene and at Buck and the kid instead, and there's something about the set of both their faces that makes him certain he's about to have one hell of a headache in a minute. 

"I escaped from the white man's prison," Imala says after he releases his father. He glowers all about him, at the village, at his father, at the rest of Chris's men. He's disheveled and bruised and tired looking, and yet he stands tall and proud and angry and looking like all he wants to do is punch the world. This is the proud young man Tastanagi saw when the kid rode away yesterday, Chris realizes, this angry youth that the old man thought was dead. "Do you know why I was in prison? For the crime of not being white." He spits on the ground and the hatred in his eyes intensifies. "And what do I find when I return? These white men!"

"That's it!" Buck growls. He throws down the rope he's still holding and stalks forward. He's got his surly face on, the one Chris knows so well -- the one that's led to at least a half-dozen broken bones, plus an untold number of nights in some jail for disturbing the peace, because by God when Buck's feeling surly he makes sure the whole damn world knows it. Buck ain't exactly what you'd call subtle, and even Ezra's gearing up for some kind of fight, though he's still all lathered up for shaving. Chris is just starting to move toward him, preparatory to grabbing Buck by one ear and giving him the same advice Buck gave him not twenty-four hours ago, when, to his surprise, Vin intervenes. 

" _Istonko_ ," Vin says, holding out one hand to Imala. He's cool and calm, as still and outwardly unknowable as a murky mill pond. Imala stares back at him and he's clearly thrown -- they're all thrown, and Buck's staring at Vin like he's grown a whole 'nother head. 

In the silence, the baby's cry is as piercing as a gunshot. 

"Imala," the woman with the newborn says, walking forward with more grace and poise than a half-dozen high society belles. She holds out the swaddled baby to Imala, and smiles at him, proud and fierce. "Your son."

There are tears in Imala's eyes as he looks down at the tiny bundle, tears and something else, a softening of that ramrod spine. Chris looks down at Adam, wide-eyed and awake now, but as still and silent as the rest of the village, and he feels again all the wonder of his birth. 

He ain't ashamed to admit he cried the first time he looked into Adam's face; ain't ashamed to admit that it was his son that really made him change his ways, really made him understand the foolishness of unbending pride. 

"He is called Osceola for the spirit of his father," Tastanagi says, beaming now. 

Imala takes the child in his arms. He's still suspicious -- the speed with which he herds his wife and father into their hut shows that -- but the immediate danger's passed. Man ain't about to start a fight now -- in fact, Chris reckons it'll be some time before he even thinks about anything except the miracle he's holding -- and Buck ain't the kind of man to hold a real grudge, especially not against a man holding his baby for the very first time. 

"He'd be dead, right now, if it weren't for me," the kid says, half-defiant, half-defensive. 

"You damn near shot my ear off," Buck says, stalking toward the kid. 

"But I didn't, did I?" the kid says. "I saved your life twice." He pokes Buck in the chest as he says this, then turns to Chris. " _Twice_."

"Think I couldn't handle him?" Buck reaches down and grabs one of the kid's pistols out of his belt. "Don't _ever_ use the butt of your gun as a weapon. You keep smackin' it around like that and before long it's gonna misfire." 

Buck pokes the kid in the chest with his own gun as he talks, and he's staring down at the kid with an expression so fierce that his mustache is bristling. Chris looks at the two of them and he's caught somewhere between laughing and groaning. He knows he should be glad that Buck's wearing his pretend-angry expression, the one he wore the day he decided to buy the only horse on the lot who ate his hat and stepped on his boots, but damn it, he doesn't need another kid in his life. He's got his hands full with Adam, he doesn't need to be looking out for this greenhorn too. Of course he knows it's already a lost cause. He ain't ever really been able to say no to Buck, which was how they'd ended up with Adam's floppy eared coon pup -- Buck's earnest, honest grin, his joy at the squirming gift he held, had been too much even for Sarah, who'd been a damn sight more practical than Chris ever was.

Blue had been a damn good dog, too -- well, once he'd stopped eating the furniture, that is.

"And another thing," Buck says, grabbing for the kid's hat, "get rid of this damn, stupid hat!"

He throws the hat down on the ground and kicks at it, though he ain't able to do so for long, because the kid reaches down and grabs it back up before Buck can do any real damage. Not that Buck's really trying to of course -- he's just messing with the kid, having clearly already decided to keep him. Of course he's so damn transparent about it that even Vin and Ezra recognize his act for what it is and they're laughing their fool heads off at him. 

"Get rid of this hat!" Buck says again, giving the kid a swift kick in the rear for good measure. 

"What Buck means is thanks, kid," Chris finally says, reckoning that if he doesn't stop Buck now, nobody'll get anything done today.

"I just want to prove to you that I can," the kid says, storming right up to Chris, hat in one hand and fierce determination written on every inch of his body. "I—"

"Save it," Chris says, sighing. One more rash, stubborn, and ornery kid in his life won't really make that big of a difference, he reckons. He's already been dealing with Buck for nigh on ten years, now, and Adam for eight, and at least he doesn't have to housebreak this one. "If you wanna fight so bad, die so bad, then stay."

"Yes!" The kid beams at him like he's just handed him the biggest gift in the world and sticks out his hand. Chris looks down at it and shakes his head, before turning around and going to collect Adam. 

"Come on, son," he tells Adam, as the sounds of a scuffle break out behind him, "there's work to be done." 

"But—" Adam says, clearly more entranced with the idea of watching Buck and the kid wrassle -- and the kid's giving as good as he's getting, Chris is glad to see -- than heading over to Nathan's tent. 

"He survives this, I reckon you'll be seeing a damn lot more of him," Chris says, watching Buck put the kid into a headlock. "Hell, we're probably gonna have to build a whole new addition to the house."

"For him?" Adam says, looking skeptically at the kid -- no, JD, that's what his name is, Chris suddenly remembers -- red faced and squirming in Buck's grip. 

"Yup." Chris sighs and stares hard at Buck. He's pretty sure he's going to regret giving in to this even more than he did with the puppy.

***

Chris manages to stay away from Nathan's infirmary for the better part of the morning, which he reckons is a mighty fine showing of restraint on his part. Of course, the increasingly dirty looks Nathan throws in his direction shows that he's probably the only one who thinks so. Still, he'd rather have Nathan vexed with him but close at hand should Adam have one of his attacks, than waste precious seconds of his boy's life hunting Nathan down. It's an utterly irrational stance, he knows, since it takes them a good five minutes at a full out run to reach town from their ranch, and he reckons it wouldn't take more than thirty seconds to find Nathan out here, but he still feels comforted by just the thought of placing Adam into Nathan's capable hands. Comforted, and more focused on the task of planning for a damn siege, too.

Still, he's starting to get damn paranoid about his boy by the time he and Tastanagi decide to break for lunch, and he walks up towards the makeshift infirmary a mite faster than perhaps is warranted. Not that he reckons Nathan's about to start complaining. 

"Chris, you don't get that boy of yours out of my tent, I'm gonna fetch me a switch and give him a whupping," Nathan says when he sees Chris approach. He puts down a bowl full of bandages and levels a glare on Chris that eloquently tells the tale of a good man pushed to the edge of his patience by an eight-year-old boy with too much energy and not enough sense to keep his fingers away from the fire. "What'd you go and send him up here for anyway?"

Chris looks away from Nathan's gaze and focuses instead on Adam, who is industriously smashing something with a rock. "He had a cough," he says.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Nathan's glare soften, but Nathan's voice is still full of exasperation when he says, "So? I had a cough this morning. Air's damn dry out here, dries up the throat real fast in the night."

"Yeah, but…" Chris says and trails off. He looks at Nathan, and Nathan sighs in understanding. This isn't the first time Chris has overreacted over Adam's health, and they both know that it won't be the last. 

"Chris," Nathan says, kindly, gently, full of the compassion and understanding that makes him such a good man, "you're a goddamn idiot and I swear to God and all his Saints that I regret nothing so much in my life as the day you darkened my door. If you don't learn to let go of that boy, you'll suffocate him."

A cold, hard lump forms in Chris's chest at the words, and he can see Nathan regrets letting them slip almost immediately. 

"He's…" Chris starts to say, but stops, unable to articulate the confusion of feelings he's got inside him -- the fear, the worry, the aggravation and love and hope; about how he worries each time Adam coughs; about the nightmares; about the way he clutches onto Adam not so much for his son's sake but his own, because so long as Adam lives, then Sarah does as well. He doesn't have to, though, because Nathan nods, understanding what he's trying to say. 

"I know," Nathan says, voice even gentler now. "But you gotta relax sometimes. Adam's a growin' boy, and a growin' boy don't need his daddy hangin' on his heels."

Chris swallows what he's about to say, recognizing the truth in Nathan's words. Hell, he reckons half of Adam's orneriness is just him acting out, pushing back against Chris's rules -- just like Chris had done at his age. 

Of course, Chris hadn't been caught in a fire as a young'un. Hell, he'd hardly been sick a day in his life. And his pa had been a mean old cuss with no sense of humor, who'd made up stupid and pointless rules. _His_ pa had been more concerned with the look of things, with keeping scandal as far away from the family name as possible, and his rules had reflected that. They weren't anything at all like Chris's rules, which were there to keep Adam safe, to keep him whole and breathing.

"Chris, I seen a lot of sick folk in my day," Nathan says, interrupting his thoughts. "And ain't a one of 'em ever got better 'cause of their daddy's worryin'. I know it's natural to fret for your boy, but there's a thing as takin' it too far. You keep goin' like you been, and you're liable to do yourself a mischief." 

Chris grunts and looks down the gentle slope to the village below, to the men practicing with rifles and the children stuffing old clothes with straw and Buck attempting to flirt under the stony gaze of Eban. He's struck, suddenly, by the impossibility of the task before him. What is he doing in this fight, with these men? What is he doing here with his son?

"Don't know I ain't done one to myself already," he says, idly though, and he's surprised when Nathan laughs. 

"Yeah. I heard you and Vin had some words yesterday." 

Chris shrugs and frowns. "I don't like the man. Makes me edgy."

Nathan laughs again. "Well, I admit I wasn't exactly in the best position to observe much, but I gotta say I was right glad that you and he were gettin' along when you saved my hide."

Chris shrugs again, and makes a face at the bitter taste Nathan's words leave in his mouth. 

"You know," Nathan says as he pulls a cigar from his vest pocket, "Vin ain't so bad."

"Nathan, you say that 'bout everybody."

"Maybe, but I'm mostly right, ain't I?" Nathan lights his cigar and puffs on it, contemplatively. "Take this mornin' -- iffin Vin hadn't stepped in there, I reckon I would've spent the better part of today wrappin' up some sore heads. Sure as hell would've made fightin' for these folks a whole lot more difficult. Without him, I reckon Buck would've made a bad situation worse."

"Huh," Chris says, then smirks at Nathan. "'Course, you ain't exactly the most unbiased person here, is you?"

"Man saved my hide. Only right that I think kindly on him." Nathan claps Chris on the shoulder. "I reckon you oughta be glad of that. Only reason I ain't whuppin' your ass for siccin' your boy on me all day is 'cause I figure I owe you one."

"Reckon you owe me more'n one," Chris says, but his smile is gentle now, kidding. He pushes his hat back off his head and runs his fingers through his hair. In all honesty, he supposes Nathan is right about Vin, at least in part. Buck had been all set for a real knock-down fight, and that wasn't the way to deal with a bunch of scared and angry folk, especially scared and angry folk rejoicing that one of their own wasn't dead like they thought he'd been. Vin stepping in like that…well, it'd been the right thing to do. Been the right way to defuse the entire situation without someone needing some doctoring later. 

He's still damned surprise that it'd been Vin to do it, though.

"You reckon I'm being too hard on him?" he says, at last, and he ain't sure if he means Vin or Adam right now. Could be he means both. Hell, he reckons that half the reason he's so damn pissy about Vin is because he sees too much of himself there, sees too much of the angry young idiot he thought he'd left behind him; sees too much of the angry young idiot he sometimes sees in his son.

"He'll get over it," Nathan says, calmly, peaceably. "The young generally do."

"Hell, you ain't an old man yet," Chris says, laughing. "Reckon you ain't got no call to be acting like one."

"Well none of y'all seem to want to act your age, so I figured the position was vacant." Nathan puffs on his cigar a bit more, then adds, "Now you gonna get that boy of yours outta here so I can do some work?"

"Work, huh," Chris says. He's seen the pretty young girl from yesterday lurking around the edges of the tent, and he doesn't doubt that Nathan's seen her too. 

"You just keep your nose out of things that don't concern you, Chris," Nathan says primly, "and I'll just keep Josiah from tellin' Adam 'bout how he got defrocked." 

"He was a real preacher, then?"

Nathan shrugs. "Dunno. Got the voice for it, sure enough, and man knows his Bible. Had him in my clinic for 'bout six weeks, once -- that would've been the first time Howard MacLaren and his boys found him ravin' in the desert and brought him in. Rambled a lot in his delirium, though I ain't sure how much of that was truth and how much of it was the fever talkin'. Man does have a lot of stories, though."

"You trust him?" Chris asks. 

Nathan takes the cigar from his mouth and stares Chris straight in the eyes. "With my life."

***

The sun's starting to head down behind the distant mountains when the lookout shouts his warning. Chris looks up from where's he's plotting out strategy with Tastanagi and frowns. It's too soon to be the Ghosts -- man who's leading them, this Anderson, he'd know better than to expect the villagers to have the gold after only four days. Must be a runner, then, coming in with some news, and while that's better than a battle with the village still half in shambles, it still ain't good. 

"Thought we'd have another day," he tells Tastanagi.

"I didn't," Tastanagi says.

Chris grunts, then stands up. "Adam!" he shouts. 

"What now?" Adam says, more than a hint of whine and petulance in his voice. 

"Go fetch Uncle Buck and the others. I need to talk to them." Adam makes a face at him, but runs off willingly enough, and he's almost out of range before Chris can yell, "But you stay clear of Vin while he's got that gun!"

It's the wrong damn thing to say, of course, because it immediately sends Adam haring off towards Vin. Chris swears, and makes to chase after his boy, but Tastanagi stops him with a gentle hand. 

"It is the fate of all fathers to watch their sons grow," Tastanagi says. 

"He doesn't learn to be careful, it's gonna be my fate to watch him pick up a rattlesnake and then be surprised that he gets bit." 

"Have more faith in your son."

"Hnh," Chris grunts. Every damn body seems to have an opinion on how he was raising his son today. Still, when that many voices shout the same thing at him, perhaps it's time to take a listen, so he settles back on his heels and watches, with his heart in his mouth, as Adam slows his breakneck run down to Vin's impromptu firing range to something approaching a walk, waiting until Vin's put his rifle down before approaching him. 

"See?" Tastanagi says. "You may not think it, but they listen."

"Coulda fooled me, the way he acts," Chris says. 

Tastanagi smiles at him, and in his smile is sadness and fondness, pain and love, loss and hope. "Ahh. Children listen -- but they do not always obey." 

Chris laughs at that, though there ain't much humor in his tone. Figures the old man's just about dead right there. Ain't just kids, neither, and his humor fades as he watches his "men" assemble around him. Well, this lot was damned well gonna listen to him, _and_ obey, even if he had to beat them all half to death to get that obedience. 

"Ghosts're coming," he says when the last one sits down. "Tomorrow afternoon, probably, when the sun's behind them." He looks at the six of them, and he sees that only JD doesn't know what that means. Well, he'll know tomorrow -- if he lives. "We ready?"

"Coulda used another day," Vin says. "And another dozen guns."

"Coulda used another dozen fighting men, too," Chris says. "Ain't gonna happen. And I reckon you'd best stop with the firing for now -- no sense in wasting shot on a bunch of cans now."

Vin nods in agreement, and shrugs. "Reckon they're as good as they're gonna get, anyway."

"Ezra?"

"My little helpers have been most diligent," Ezra says. "We're putting the finishing touches on the decoys now."

Chris nods. He doesn't need to ask Nathan if he's ready, and he can see Josiah's wall for himself. He still reckons one good kick'll knock the whole damn thing down, but if it manages to funnel the horses into the chokehold before it does, then it'll have done its job. 

"Buck?"

"JD and I checked all the routes up the back of the bluff. Set a couple of snare traps and a few triplines, but I don't reckon they'll do much to slow these Ghosts down. Gotta tell you, Chris, I'm damn uncomfortable leavin' our flank open like that." 

"That's why we ain't gonna," Chris says. He picks up the stick he and Tastanagi were using earlier and points down to the crude model of the village they'd been strategizing over. "Now listen carefully," he says.

***

There's a tension in the village that night, one that Chris recognizes from his youth. It makes him antsy, all this anticipation, this worry. He finds himself checking his gun a half dozen times, and that irritates him -- he ain't checked his gun like that since he was twenty-two and stole horses with Ella for the thrill of it all. Even Adam feels the strain, and he's silent and slightly subdued while the two of them eat. 

Not that Chris can eat much, what with the way his stomach is all twisted up in worry.

"I'm gonna check the perimeter," he tells his son after pushing the food on his plate around for a good ten minutes. "You sit here and don't move."

Adam nods his acquiescence, and Chris looks at him sharply for a minute, just to make sure Adam ain't feigning obedience. But it seems like Adam's really gonna listen to him, so Chris stands up and moves out into the darkness around the village. He paces the entire perimeter of the village twice, more to move than because he thinks it'll do any good, before he returns to the fire and his son. Walking hasn't calmed his nerves any, but it's cleared his mind, and makes it easier to ride the restless energy coursing through his veins. Makes it easier to overcome the tension in his belly, too, and by the time he heads back towards Adam and the fire, he's hungry enough to finish what was on his plate. 

Some of the tentative peace he's been able to find drains away when he sees Vin sitting down at the fire, a plate of beans balanced on one knee. He feels the scowl settle onto his face and he's about to stomp over there and demand Vin leave his boy alone when something about Vin's face, the set of his shoulders, makes him stop. 

There's apprehension in Vin's face, a wary stiffness to his spine that speaks of a man who is afraid and is fighting hard against that fear. A part of Chris thinks that this is right -- that Vin _should_ be scared, because there's still more than a trace of that bad blood from yesterday running through his veins, and the fact that he's sitting so calmly by Adam only adds fuel to his irrational anger -- but the fear just doesn't seem right. The two of them have been treading on eggshells around each other all day, and it just seems down right bizarre that Vin would choose now to pick a fight, especially with what's looming on the morrow. 

And then Chris sees that the reason Vin looks like he's just realized he's sharing a cave with a slumbering bear is because he's being stared at by Adam and, well, Chris ain't at all ashamed to admit that this fact gives him a great deal of malicious glee. Adam's got that look on his face that Chris has come to dread, the one that means he's about to start asking questions just for the sake of asking, and Chris would bet his best horse that Vin's not the kind of man who likes being questioned. 

"What's your coat made out of?" Adam asks, abruptly. 

"Buffalo," Vin replies. 

"You a buffalo hunter?"

Vin pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth, then shakes his head. "Not really."

"How'd you get the coat, then?"

"Made it."

"You shoot the buffalo it come from?"

"Yup."

"Where'd you shoot it?"

"Texas."

"You from Texas?"

"Yup."

"You ever see a Comanche?"

"Seen a few."

"You miss Texas?"

Vin shrugs and Adam nods, and somehow an understanding passes between them that this is not a topic Vin will talk about. That won't deter Adam from asking about other things, of course, and it's not long before Adam says, "How big do buffalo get?"

"Big."

"You like huntin' 'em?"

"Guess so."

"Then how come you ain't a buffalo hunter?"

"Don't hunt 'em for money."

"Then why'd you hunt 'em?"

"Food. Shelter."

"How d'you get shelter from a buffalo?"

"Make a tent out of their hides."

"What's that word you said?"

Vin blinks at the sudden change in topic and shoots Adam a sharp, confused glance. "What?"

"This mornin'. Uncle Buck was real mad at that Indian, and then you said a word to him and everyone stopped movin'. What was it?"

" _Istonko_."

"Funny word."

"It's Seminole. For hello."

"You a Seminole? You don't look like a Seminole."

"'Cause I ain't one."

"But you know how to talk to 'em."

"Sort of."

"How do you know that if you ain't a Seminole?"

"Learned it."

"Why?"

"Had to."

"Why?"

"'Cause I did, ok?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Adam," Chris says, stepping out from the shadows. "Go and wash up."

"Pa—"

"Hurry up, now," he says, and Adam sighs, but goes. 

He sits down across the fire from Vin and contemplates the man. Vin stares back at him for a moment, then goes back to his meal. It's a forced nonchalance, and Chris can see through it in an instant, see the tension still in Vin's shoulders, in the way he holds his fork, in the way he stares unblinking at the fire. It makes Chris smile, a little, to see this act of bravado, because he recognizes it for what it is. Hell, he probably wore the same damn expression the first time he went to Sunday dinner at the Connolly's, the same mulish determination to pretend he weren't shaking in his boots, though back then the worst he'd have had to deal with would've been an ass full of rock salt. Not idiots with a cannon. 

Chris sighs. Problem is, he just doesn't like the man.

No, problem is he won't _let_ himself like the man. 

And, with a sudden, startling clarity, Chris knows _why_. 

It's not that Vin is dangerous, though he is, or that he holds deep secrets within him, or that he carries with him a violence that Chris doesn't want anywhere near his son. Chris has known dangerous men before, and been friends with them. Hell, if danger and secrets and bad influences on Adam were all that it took to make Chris dislike a man, he would've broken with Buck a long time ago. And while all these things are a part of Chris's dislike, he knows that the root of his uneasiness lies in something far simpler: they are, in a way, too much alike. There is a darkness to Vin, a wildness, that calls to Chris, as seductive as any siren's song. It reminds him, in a way, of the allure Ella once held for him, of the joy to be found in dark deeds, in recklessness and violence, in drink and blood, and he knows that his devil recognizes kin in Vin and is drawn to Vin's devil like the needle of a compass is drawn to the North. And he wants to give in to that darkness again, wants to give in to the drink and the fighting, wants to lead the life he led before Sarah, before Adam, before he found some measure of salvation. 

It had been so hard to walk away from his devil before. He doesn't know if he can do it again. 

But he knows he can't give in to the man he used to be, if not for his own sake, then for Adam's. Chris would rather die than see his son become the man he used to be. And Chris knows that if he let himself give in to the wild darkness he sees in Vin's eyes, it won't be just his own future that will be ruined. Life out here is hard enough, short and violent enough -- no sense in looking for trouble, and with Vin at his side, Chris knows that that's exactly what he'll end up doing. Vin's too damn eager for a fight, too damn eager to use his guns to sort out trouble instead of his words, and Chris doesn't want Adam learning that, and not only because a messy death is the only end to that road. 

On the other hand, Vin had saved Nathan's life. He'd picked up a gun and stepped into a fight he wasn't a party to, risked his own life for that of a stranger, and a black man at that. Risked his own skin, just because he'd seen it wasn't right to let a bunch of drunks string up a helpless man. Saved the life of a man he hadn't even known, just because it was the right thing to do, while the rest of the goddamn town had just hid from the trouble. And maybe Vin had just been spoiling for a fight, but that act spoke well of the man; spoke to Chris's own sense of right and wrong. 

Whole damn town would've let Nathan hang, and Chris reckons he ought to recognize that fact, ought to recognize what Vin did. Hell, he probably ought to apologize to Vin for being so damn snappish at him, but that wasn't gonna happen. There was only one person he'd ever apologized to, and Sarah'd always said that getting him to say "I'm sorry" was worse than giving birth -- least after giving birth you had a baby to show for your pains. 

Still, saying "thank you" is probably a good start. 

He clears his throat and looks off towards the center of the village, where Ezra and Josiah are sitting around another fire, and a whole gaggle of kids're running around, hooting and hollering. He can feel Vin's eyes on him, and it's an effort to not frown, to not scowl, to not push away. 

"Thank you," he says, keeping his eyes on Nathan flirting with Eban's pretty daughter. "For saving Nathan's life. You didn't have to, and you did. It means a lot -- he means a lot. To the town." His gaze shifts, as it always does, to Adam, to his son laughing in the firelight and chasing after a dark haired Indian boy. "To us. Don't like your methods but." He shrugs and looks at Vin. "Well. Thanks."

Vin stares at him, blank faced, unreadable, then nods abruptly and looks back down at his plate. Chris breathes out and tilts his face up away from the fire, up to the night sky ablaze with starlight. Well, that wasn't so bad, he reckons, and he's just about to get up and corral Adam when Vin begins to speak. 

"The Seminoles," Vin says, then stops. On the edge of his vision he sees Vin shrug his shoulders like a horse trying to settle an uncomfortable saddle. "Never lived with 'em. Not really. Stayed in one of their villages for a couple of weeks a few years back -- learned a bit of their tongue, enough to greet folks by. But." He shrugs again, this time a gesture of resignation. "Well. Learned not to stay too long in one place a while ago. Best if I keep on movin'."

"Got no kin?"

"Had some, once. Had a whole bunch, for a while, but. Well, I ain't got 'em no more." Vin shifts around, and Chris brings his head down, watches Vin watch the villagers. When Vin speaks again, his voice is solemn, quiet, like he ain't really aware he's talking -- but Chris reckons Vin's always aware of what he's doing. "Thing is, I reckon a man who's lost everything has two choices: he can become hard, shut himself off from the world, or he can pick himself up and keep on trying, despite the pain. 'Course, a man gets his world pulled out from under him often enough…well, sometimes, he forgets that life can be full of pleasure too, forgets what it means to have friends, a family. Forgets how to be around other folk." 

Chris nods. He understands that, understands the way tragedy can pick you up and spin you around until you don't know up from down, morning from evening. Hell, he knows all too well how grief can make you mad, make you hard, make you forget all that's good in the world. The six months of his life after Sarah's death ain't ever gonna let him forget it. And if he'd lost Adam too…

But his brain skitters away from that thought before he can look at it too close. 

"Well," he says, slowly. "First thing I reckon you'd best remember is that, generally speaking, it's considered polite to talk first, before you go shooting a man in his leg." 

Vin laughs at that, and Chris ain't at all surprised at the ease with which he returns Vin's smile.

***

Chris corrals Adam about halfway through the morning, when Adam starts showing a little too much interest in climbing up onto the roof of the hut where Buck's preparing his position. Adam's just bursting with energy this morning, and it takes Chris awhile to get him to focus well enough to listen. 

"Adam," he says, and he shakes his son's shoulder. He's being more brusque than usual, he knows, and right now he doesn't rightly care about that. Maybe if Adam sees he's scared, he'll get scared too. And maybe if he's scared, he won't do a damn fool thing and get himself hurt or -- God forbid -- killed. 

"I'm listenin', I'm listenin'," Adam says, squirming in Chris's grip. 

"Adam, you do exactly as you're told today, ok? I ain't fooling around here."

Adam looks up into Chris's face, and clearly rethinks whatever words of protest he was about to say. He nods, quick and jerky, and then looks away, back to the village, back to the gaggle of kids being entertained by Ezra. Chris shakes his son's shoulder, draws Adam's gaze, his focus, back. 

"Promise me," he says, harsh and anxious. " _Promise me_ you'll stay with them other kids when the battle starts. It ain't gonna be safe down in the village and." He pauses, choking on his own fear, his own pain. "And I. Well. I ain't gonna lose you too, you hear? I ain't gonna let anything bad happen to you, but you gotta help me out. You gotta keep yourself as safe as possible."

Adam nods again, face solemn. "I promise," he says. 

"Swear it. Swear it by your mama's grave."

"I swear." Adam chews on his lip and looks down at his feet. When he looks back up, there's fear in his eyes, and Chris takes it all back -- he doesn't ever want to see his boy afraid again. 

"We're gonna win, right Pa? 'Cause we're the good guys. And good guys always win. Right?" Adam asks, hesitant and young and so unsure that good would always triumph over bad. 

"Yeah," Chris says. "We're gonna win." He pulls Adam into a hug and holds him tight. "I love you, boy. Don't you forget that."

"Pa." Adam pushes at him and when Chris pulls away he can't help but smile at the disgruntled moue on his boy's face. "Come on. The other guys're watchin'."

"Tough." He hugs Adam again, then lets his son go. Adam straightens his clothes and scowls at Chris before running off to join the rest of the kids crowded around Ezra. Behind him, he hears Buck's spurs jingle as he approaches, but he doesn't stand up at once. He wants to remember this moment, wants to soak in the innocent happiness of these kids. 

Then he sighs and stands and turns around. 

"He gonna listen?" Buck asks, his usually affable face disconcertingly serious. 

"Yup." Chris shakes his head and looks around. "Hell, never thought I'd end up here, Buck."

"You ain't the only one, pard." Buck smiles, though there's little humor in his eyes. "Still, we seen worse."

"Yeah? When was the last time _you_ faced down a cannon?"

"Oh, well, there was this one time over in Leavenworth when one of them army fellas found out I was sleepin' with his wife. 'Course he didn't have no cannon, but he did have a whole dang regiment of soldiers on his side. I reckon he would've shot me dead if he'd been able to catch hold of me, but his missus told me what he was plannin' and I got outta there faster'n a toothless cat gettin' outta a pit full of hungry dogs. 'Course, I had to leave so dang fast I left behind my second best pair of boots, but I reckon I managed to save my skin, and what's a pair of boots with a hole in 'em that's bigger'n the state of Texas compared to that?"

"Y'know, I don't reckon that that's gonna work this time."

"Yup. Still," Buck says as he claps Chris on the shoulder and smiles a smile that lights up his whole face, "we get outta this, we're gonna have one _hell_ of a story to tell the ladies!"

"Shoot, you ain't never needed help spinning a yarn before."

"Chris, you gotta have _atmosphere_ to tell a story," Buck says. "Don't got no atmosphere, then all you're spinnin' is a buncha hot air."

"Ain't that what you're doing anyway?"

"You ain't never been able to appreciate a fine tale, Chris," Buck says, shaking his head sadly. "How you managed to win a girl as sweet and fine as Sarah when you're as sour as a catfish suckin' on a lemon is beyond me."

"She was a damn fine woman." 

"Yup."

"I ain't gonna let her son die, Buck," Chris says. 

"Ain't never gonna happen," Buck says, serious again. "Not so long as I can shoot a damn pistol, anyways. And I ain't plannin' on dyin' today -- got too many ladies to see! So don't you worry 'bout a thing there, Chris. Them damn Ghosts'll be the only ones dyin' today, I guarantee."

Chris laughs and shakes his head. Somehow, when it's Buck saying it, Chris can almost believe every word is true.

Of course his good humor doesn't last, and by the time the lookout calls out the Ghosts' approach, Chris is just about ready to snap. He ain't been this tense since the day Adam was born -- he'd felt as damn useless then as he does now, too. He shoots a quick look at Buck, and nods, then picks up his rifle. 

"Time's up," he says, quietly, then louder, "Positions!"

He doesn't bother to watch his men take their places. They'd either be there or they wouldn't, and if they weren't then there wasn't much Chris could do about it now. Besides, he's more concerned with making sure Adam runs to the narrow crevasse with the other kids. It ain't the safest place to be -- of course, the safest place would've been back in town -- but it'll do. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Vin hopping down from his perch atop one of adobe houses, snapping a small, brass spyglass closed as he does so. "Ain't gonna be long now," he says as he jogs past Chris. He flashes a quick, sharp grin before he disappears into the brush, heading for his spot atop one of the low outcrops that flank the village. 

"First we talk," Chris calls after him. " _Then_ we shoot."

Vin's laughter is the only acknowledgement he gets, but Chris nods anyway, sure he'll be listened to. He scrambles up the ladder to take his position on the rooftop with Tastanagi and crouches low. 

His hands are steady. 

He breathes in and out, slow and calm. Lets himself come right to the knife's edge cliff of that place, deep inside him, that's cold and silver and quiet -- the place where the world is reduced to him, and his gun, and the shadows of the men he's gonna kill. 

He breathes in and out, then curses as he counts up the men entering the village. 

"Thought you said there were twenty of them," he growls at Tastanagi. 

"No," the old man says. "I asked if twenty would scare you."

"Twenty, no. Forty, yes."

Tastanagi shrugs, and Chris swears under his breath again. Forty men and a cannon. Twenty men had been bad, but doable. Twenty men and a cannon had been worse, but victory had still been possible. Forty men and a cannon -- hell, they'll be lucky to get out of here with all their limbs intact. 

Still, ain't much he can do now, except hunker down and wait. 

The Ghosts spread out in a semi-circle, their horses stamping and chewing at their bits. In the quiet, Chris can hear ever creak of leather, every snort, every soft shift of cloth. One of the men dismounts and walks to the chest. He kneels and opens it, grabs a handful of the sand inside and lets it spill out from his gloved fist. 

"Sand," the man says. 

The old soldier on the skittish white horse shifts in his saddle, his face growing hard and cold. "My instructions could not have been more explicit."

"No," the first man says as he remounts. "You were very explicit, Colonel."

"And yet, for some reason, they were not carried out." The old man levers himself up in his seat and shouts, "I have shot my own men for less!"

Chris breathes in and out, then stands up, the muzzle of his rifle pointed towards the sky as a gesture of peace -- though he knows he can bring it down and fire before any of the men below can draw their guns. He reckons the old soldier knows that too, for the man smiles at him and touches the brim of his Calvary hat. 

"Ahh," the Colonel says, and it's a pleased, but unsurprised, sound. "Colonel Emmett Riley Anderson of the Army of the Confederate States of America. And you are…?"

"There's no gold here, Colonel," Chris says. 

"No, no, of course not," Anderson drawls. "You're just here for your health."

On the other side of the village Vin stands up, gun pointed more directly towards the Colonel and his men. For a moment Chris thinks Vin'll just start shooting again, but then he says, "We come to ask you to leave. Only gonna ask you once." 

"And purely out of the goodness of your hearts."

"Yup," Buck says from his position behind Chris. "Somethin' like that."

"Well. How many of you humanitarians are there?"

Chris watches Anderson's eyes as he counts up the rest of Chris's men, and in his heart he agrees with the small smirk that slowly appears on Anderson's face: Seven men against forty soldiers and a cannon. Hell, he'd smirk too if he were in Anderson's shoes. 

"Enough," Chris says, loudly and without hesitation. 

Anderson leans back in his saddle and looks over to the first man. "What do you say Captain? Think there's gonna be trouble?"

"No trouble Colonel," Chris says. "You and your men just turn around and ride on out."

"I like that," Anderson says, laughing. "Audacity!"

"Ain't nothin' here for you Colonel, 'cept a whole lotta bullets," Vin says, cocking his rifle. "Best you be movin' on now."

Anderson grins up at Vin and tips his hat. He turns sideways in his saddle to the Captain and says something, soft and low. Chris tenses, ready for the command that he knows will come but hoping -- praying -- that he's wrong. 

"Company," the Captain calls out in his strong, Irish voice, one arm raised high above his head. "Fire!"

Chris is ducking before the word is out of the Captain's mouth. The Ghosts are firing wildly, their horses shying and starting at the noise, and the men struggle to hold the line, fighting their frightened mounts -- pillaged, from any number of farms between here and Atlanta, no doubt, and unaccustomed to the sounds of battle. Chris keeps low, fires when he can, but right now he's just biding time, waiting until there's enough smoke and dust and chaos on the ground to give their ruse just enough cover to make it believable. He glances up to where Ezra's stationed, high on the bluff, and nods. Ezra nods back and brings his fingers to his mouth. His whistle rings out high and pure above the discord of the battle, and Chris finds that he's holding his breath. 

It's a good plan. 

It should work. 

It _has_ to work. 

The straw filled dummies begin to pop up -- not anywhere _near_ realistic enough to fool a man with a calm and peaceful mind, but to tired soldiers caught up in the fever of a battle, men expecting enemies to rise like ghosts out of the dust and smoke, they're good enough. The Ghosts begin to fire on the decoys, cursing loudly when they don't go down. Chris brings his rifle up over the edge of the adobe's roof and begins to kill. 

He picks them off as fast as he can, trying to get either Anderson or his Captain, but the smoke and dust work against him. It's chaos down there as the soldiers die, the riderless horses rearing and running, adding their own brand of confusion to the fight. Chris fires again and again, until the rifle's ammo runs out, then switches to his pistols. One, two. He shoots, then ducks down behind the crude rocky barricade he constructed on the roof this morning. Ducks back around and fires again. Over and over, until his hands are numb from the recoil of his guns. He sinks down lower, checks his ammo, uses the moment to catch a quick breath and reload the rifle for another round of sniping. He's got two -- no, maybe three -- men down when the rest of the villagers attack, springing up from their hiding places underneath the straw and attacking the Ghosts with everything they have. An arrow kills as efficiently as a bullet, after all, and the villagers are all good archers. Chris breathes out and grits his teeth. This is the dangerous part of the plan, the part where they may do more harm than good. There's too much confusion down there -- as he knew there would be -- to fire at the men on the ground, the ones who have realized just how good a target they make sitting high upon their stolen horses, and have slid out of their saddles to use their own mounts as shields. Bad enough to kill a horse, but now there are villagers down there as well, and in the swirling dust he can't tell a Confederate uniform from a Seminole jacket. 

He leans out and fires again, catches a few glimpses of the battle raging below. The villagers fight with desperate savagery, using hunting knifes and guns taken from dead men's hands. It's not enough, truly, for they're largely unarmed men fighting men on horses, men with guns. One villager goes down, then another, and Chris fires again, still trying to find Anderson in melee. The battle swirls, then parts, and there's Anderson, facing away from the fight, his gun raised and aimed back towards the way the Ghosts came. Chris brings his rifle around and he's about to fire when the dust closes in again, hiding Anderson from his view. He swears, then shoots a soldier aiming for Eban. 

The women are throwing rocks now, having run out of arrows, and Chris can hear the outraged curses of the men they hit. Ain't likely to kill a man with a rock, but you can damn sure inconvenience him, and he's right glad the women are showing their pluck. Not that he'd have expected anything different, of course. Whole damn territory seems to breed up its women on gunfire and guts -- he ain't yet met a single girl out here who was at all like the girls he'd known back home, all shy and coy and soft.

Through the din he hears the brassy notes of a bugle calling the retreat. The soldiers on the ground wheel and run, heading out towards the chokehold and the trap Chris has laid. He turns and looks up at the women on the cliff, shouts out, "Now!" though he reckons they can't hear him. Imala's wife's been watching him, though, and the women haul on the rough rope attached to the net. It springs up, fast and unexpected, and the horses in the lead rear and dump their riders. The fallen men pick themselves up and begin hacking at the thick ropes with their sabers. 

"Keep shooting!" Chris shouts out, though he reckons none of the folks here really need the encouragement. He ducks down behind the rocks as one of the Ghosts fires at him, and by the time he re-emerges, the soldiers have cut down the net and are beating a fast retreat. Even the wagon and the big gun are making good time. Beside him, Tastanagi stands and cheers, an ululation of exultation that makes Chris smile. 

Chris glances at the sun. 

Whole damn thing took less than five minutes, he reckons, though he's sweating like he's been running after an ornery horse for at least an hour. 

Chris wipes the sweat from his eyes and flexes his fingers. Around him a few of the villagers take potshots at the retreating men. He looks over to where Nathan's hurrying up to his makeshift infirmary, and then down at the village, at the bodies and the blood. He grimaces and shakes his head. He was wrong -- the battle ain't nearly over yet, though his part in it is now done. 

It's only pure luck that he notices the shot -- he just happens to be looking at the right body at the right time, is all, and sees the man jerk, then still. At first he thinks it's just the last spasms of a dying man. But then the man next to him, the one who received no injury worse than a rock to his head, stumbles in his dazed struggle to stand and falls, face first, to the ground. Blood oozes out, thick and black, from underneath him, and a dark stain slowly grows on the back of his shirt. 

Chris stands, suddenly angry, suddenly more furious than he's ever been in his life. These men are wounded and they're being picked off one-by-one, like they're some kind of animals brought to slaughter. They may be the enemy, but they're still human beings, and as soon as he figures out who's doing it…well, they'll be damn lucky if he doesn't strip their hide right off their bones. He glances around, looking for the gunman, but it ain't nobody in the village. Must be coming from the bluffs, then, and he looks up, looks straight at Vin, who nods once at him, then brings his rifle around to fire down on the last of the wounded men, his killing shot covered by the exuberant defiance of the village's men.

Chris looks away, sickened by this death. He knows can't do nothing about it now, but it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, a coldness in his blood. 

"Man's a goddamn barbarian," he mutters. 

Tastanagi glances over at him, and his expression, while exhilarated, has a remoteness to it that makes Chris uneasy. It reminds him too much of the way the villagers stared at them when they first arrived, like they were all half-tamed savage beasts, just waiting for an excuse to fight. 

"It was necessary," Tastanagi says. "And merciful." He smiles then, once more amiable. "Come! We have won!"

Chris climbs off the roof slowly -- slower than Tastanagi, who's grinning like a fool and walking like man half his age. The women are down off the cliffs now, running through the village, looking for their sons and husbands, their fathers and brothers. The children begin to creep out of the crevasse, solemn and serious looking, but unharmed, and Chris breathes out a sigh when he sees Adam among them. Men are dead and his boy his safe, and right now that's all Chris will let himself focus on.

Tastanagi calls out to his people in his native tongue as he raises his rifle above his head, then turns to Chris. 

"We have won," Tastanagi says again. 

Chris shakes his head. He ain't so sure about that, but he ain't about to bring down the old man's spirits -- nor is he particularly inclined to start another fight. "Your people fought well."

Tastanagi beams at him. "We fight well together."

Buck saunters up to them, panting a bit but grinning. "We whupped 'em good, old pard."

He looks away and catches Vin's eye, sees in them the same fatalistic doubt he's feeling. They drove those men off today, but they were damn lucky. Anderson had been too complacent, too sure of his victory -- next time, he'll be better prepared. Next time, he'll use his cannon. 

Of course he ain't exactly pleased by the fact that he and Vin are thinking alike, not right now, not with the cold-blooded murder of the wounded men still so vivid and present in his mind.

"What're you thinkin'?" Vin asks, and Chris knows he's not just asking about Chris's doubts.

Chris shakes his head, not trusting himself to so much as look at Vin right now, let alone talk to him, and focuses his attention on Buck. "Someone needs to get up on that ridge and keep a lookout."

"Hell, they ain't gonna stop runnin' 'til they reach the Rio Grande," Buck says.

"Then you'd best get up there and make sure that's where they're headed," Chris says, and Buck shakes his head but he shoulders his rifle anyway. 

"I'll take first watch," Vin says, and Buck drops his rifle to the ground, grinning widely at Vin. 

"Fine," Chris says, relieved. He heads towards the kids, towards Adam, but stops when he sees JD looking shaken and sporting a damn big blood stain on his jacket. "You all right?"

JD looks at him, startled for a second, then down at himself before shaking his head. "Huh? Oh. This? It's not my blood."

Buck snorts and slaps the back of JD's head. "Damn lucky it isn't, boy. You don't _ever_ fan your guns like that. Spoils your aim somethin' fierce. _One_ ," he says, thumping JD in the chest as he says the word, "good shot is better than six bad ones."

JD glares up at Buck, some of his earlier spark back in his eyes, and Chris looks away so the kid doesn't see his grin. 

"Anything else?" JD asks, stepping close and getting right in Buck's face.

"Nope," Buck says. "That's about it for now." 

He walks away and Chris watches JD follow him with his eyes. There's a smile on JD's face, something kind of like pride, or maybe gratitude, and his shoulders are straighter when he turns and walks in the opposite direction. 

"Two damn kids," Chris mutters under his breath as he watches the two. His gaze shifts to Adam, who's helping the villagers collect the guns on the ground. "Hell. _Three_ of them." He rolls his shoulders back, and walks towards his son. 

Adam looks up as he approaches, and there's a grave solemnity in his eyes. "Pa."

"Adam. You ok, son?"

"Yeah." Adam looks down at the gun in his hand, a LeMat with a well-worn handle. He fingers the cylinder a bit then looks back up. "Weren't like what I expected."

"Usually ain't." He kneels down before his boy. For all that Adam is a child of the frontier and has seen violence and violent death all his short life, there's a damn big difference from being on the edges of a battle to being in the thick of it. "You scared?"

Adam shakes his head. "Not really. 'Cept. I wish I coulda done more. I like these people, Pa. They're nice."

Chris closes his eyes for a moment, suddenly choked by the pride that swells up at his boy's words. "You keep hold of that, Adam, and you'll do just fine."

Adam nods, then holds out the gun. "So you gonna teach me to shoot now?"

And just like that, the pride is gone. Same old argument, same old request, and trust Adam to pick _right now_ to bring it up again. Still, Chris can't be real mad at his boy, not now, and hell, it's probably time he bought Adam a rifle of his own and taught him how to hunt. 

Only not today. He can't stomach any more shooting today. 

"Some other time," he says, ruffling Adam's hair. "Maybe when we get home."

"Okay." Adam flashes a grin at him, then runs off.

Chris watches him go, then shakes his head. He stands and turns in a slow circle, taking in the damage to the village, the bodies on the ground. More Confederate gray than anything else, and that's good. That's real good. Not as many Ghosts as he'd have wished, but he reckons those that could walk are gone, and those that couldn't…well, they'll be gone from the village soon enough. Besides, they've got enough guns now to give Anderson a real fight when he comes back, and that'll even the odds a bit. 

His gaze wanders back to where Adam crouches beside the body of a dead soldier, carefully working the man's gun belt off of his body. He nods to himself, proud in this moment at the calmness his boy is showing, the way he's already figured out that they need the bullets just as much as the guns. And yet there is a sadness he can't shake, a kind of despair he doesn't know what to do with. This is not the first dead man his son has seen, and it won't be his last, and a part of Chris's heart breaks at the realization of that fact. 

Chris feels Tastanagi come up beside him, and he glances down at the old man. 

"He will make a great warrior," Tastanagi says, nodding towards Adam.

"I'd rather he made an old one," Chris replies, though in his secret heart he knows he'd rather Adam be no warrior at all. Tastanagi laughs and nods. 

"All fathers do," he says. He turns toward Nathan's infirmary and his shoulders slump a bit before he takes a deep breath and squares them up again. Chris grimaces, and he's tempted to let Tastanagi walk up there alone, then follow along to hear the toll of the dead. But he squares his own shoulders and turns to follow Tastanagi.

"He'll come back," Chris says, quietly. "You know he will."

"I do." Tastanagi clasps his hands behind his back, and his pace is slow and measured. He looks around the village, at the young men loading the guns. "And so do they. Your people always return. We have come to expect it. But we drove him off today, and so tonight, we shall celebrate. Tomorrow, we can prepare."

Chris grunts. He wants to argue, wants to say they don't have the time to sit back on their laurels, but the truth is, he could use some cheer right now. He could use something to remind himself that today was about more than killing men. 

Josiah's on the makeshift table when they arrive, face pale but calm. Chris glances at Nathan who says, "Looks like the bullet went clean through, but he lost a lot of blood." Nathan scowls down at Josiah who grins at him. "He's a damn fool, but he's a lucky one."

"Why didn't you tell us you were hurt?" Tastanagi asks, placing a hand on Josiah's arm, his tone is a strange mix of concern and sorrow. It astonishes Chris, the depth of Tastanagi's care for a man he's just met. There's more to it than just the simple fact that Josiah was injured protecting the village; Chris reckons Tastanagi would be just as concerned even if Josiah was some stranger he'd found wandering in the desert. It makes the ease with which he dismissed Vin's cold-blooded killing of the wounded all that more chilling. 

Josiah looks over at the old man and somehow manages to shrug with just his face. "You didn't ask."

Chris grins and leans forward until he's sure Josiah can see him. "Your birds lied to you, Josiah."

Josiah grins back. "We shall see."

Chris shakes his head. He pulls Nathan aside and asks, "How bad?"

"Ezra dislocated his shoulder, and Imala got a bullet to his, but it weren't too deep. Hell I barely had to cut anythin' to get at it. Jacob here," and he nods to a rangy black man sitting on a stool, "broke his leg fallin' off a buildin'. Four dead so far, two from guns, one from a knife, and one poor fella got trampled by a horse, but overall, ain't as bad as some battles I've seen. We're damn lucky most of them Ghosts only got paper cartridges. Them bullets go in, but they don't go in as deep as some do. Well, 'cept for the one that hit Josiah. Still, ain't seen no fracturing or fragmenting so far, and I reckon most of these folks'll be up and about in a few weeks time. Sore as any mule-kicked son of a bitch, but alive for all that."

"You're a good man, Nathan Jackson," Chris says. Nathan flashes a smile at him then makes shooing motions with his hand. 

"I'm a busy one. Now since you ain't injured in the slightest, get the hell out of my tent and go bother someone else for a change."

***

By the time the sun sets, two more villagers have died, and Nathan ain't giving good odds on the chances of a third. Chris would've thought the news would temper the remaining villager's good mood, but apparently not, for it isn't long before Eban begins to play his battered old piano and the bottles of whiskey -- and the clay jugs full of something else that isn't whiskey but burns just as good -- begin to appear. Chris watches Adam run past him with a pack of other boys, all of them holding sticks and apparently deeply engrossed in some elaborate game. He frowns, a little, as he hears Adam shout, "I'm Chris Larabee and I'm comin' to get you!" but for tonight, he'll let it be. 

For a moment, Chris thinks of going over to the small crowd gathered around Eban and his piano; they're singing _Old Dan Tucker_ , and passing around a jug. It's a lively, lovely noise, but Chris knows that in time the tunes will turn maudlin as the singers remember the voices of the missing men. At which point, Chris has no doubt, someone's going to start singing _John Brown's Body_ , and then the rest of the sad songs will come out, like _Long, Long Ago_ and _Lilly Dale_ and Chris would prefer to not spend the night singing about bodies moldering in graves or loves long lost -- not with so many bodies heaped out there in the desert for the carrion eaters to feast upon and so many new widows. So instead Chris climbs up the small slope to where Buck and JD sit, a bottle of whiskey clutched in JD's hands. He nods at Buck and settles down, stretching out his legs and fishing out a cheroot. 

"Nice night," he tells Buck, who grins. 

"Still alive," Buck says. They sit quietly, companionably, for a moment, and watch the village celebrate below. Then Buck shifts and clears his throat and casts his eyes at JD, who has the look of a stubborn drunk about his face. JD tips the bottle back and drinks deeply, spilling a good deal of the mahogany whiskey down his chin. 

"What?" Chris asks, quietly, annoyed that Buck's already asking him for help with his latest stray. 

"Kid's been drinkin' like a man plannin' on drainin' the ocean dry," Buck says, softly. "Reckon it's the first time he seen anyone get shot." Buck takes the bottle from JD and takes a sip, then nudges JD in the ribs. "Weren't like the dime-store novels, was it kid?"

JD shakes his head and looks down at his hands. 

"I didn't count on seein' their eyes." JD's voice quavers and breaks a little, and Chris nods in sympathy. Ain't always easy to kill a man, even when that man wants to kill you. 

"Hell, you can see their eyes, you're too damn close," Buck says. He takes another sip and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. "And don't ever break cover like that. Don't you know that standin' in front of bullets is a sure-fire way to get yourself killed?"

"You done yet?" JD growls out, glaring at Buck. He snatches the bottle back and drinks some more. 

"Why don't you slow down there, son," Chris says, as kindly as he can, but apparently that's just the wrong way to deal with the kid, because before he knows it, JD's up on his feet, swaying and angry. 

"What the hell gives you the right to tell me what to do?" JD shouts, pointing a trembling finger at Chris. Chris looks at the finger, then at JD, and shakes his head. 

"You wanted to keep him," he says to Buck. "He's your damn problem."

"Hell, kid's just a little drunk is all," Buck says mildly. "Ain't like you never picked a stupid fight when you was drunk."

"I _ain't_ a _kid_ ," JD says. 

"Your damn problem, Buck," Chris says again, and he stands up. It's taken him a damn long time to learn to walk away from a drunk and stupid kid trying to pick a fight, and he's a damn proud of himself for doing so now. He looks around for Adam as he strolls, more out of habit than because he thinks Adam is gonna get into any real trouble. Well, not any dangerous trouble, anyway.

"'Course, you don't live long out here if you're soft. If you're soft, the desert'll just drink your blood and spit out your bones," he hears Josiah say, somewhere in the darkness around him. 

Chris pauses, and he's almost able to convince himself that Adam ain't anywhere near the crazy preacher, when he hears Adam say, "And then the crows come and peck out your eyes, right Josiah?"

"Yup. A feast for all the scavengers of the world."

Chris grimaces and turns around. Josiah's got a whole passel of kids around him, all hanging onto his every word, and it really ain't fair, because there ain't no way Chris can yell at him now, not with those kids there and that wound in his leg. He chews on the end of his cheroot for a minute, then looks up to where Buck and JD are still sitting and grins. 

"Josiah," he calls out. "Reckon JD could use some help finishing off a bottle of whiskey."

"That so?" Josiah says. He levers himself to his feet using a long and gnarled piece of wood. "That's mighty Christian of him."

"Aww! Josiah!" the kids shout out, and Josiah beams down at them like some strange, mad, benevolent giant. 

"Now you go on and bother Ezra. He's looking mighty lonely over there," Josiah says, then winks as he catches Chris's eye. Chris grins back and moves on. He wanders from campfire to campfire, smiling at the villagers, refusing the drinks and food they press on him. There'll be time to drink and eat later; right now, he just wants to walk for a bit and smoke his cheroot. 

The thin little cigar is burnt almost down to a stub when Buck joins him. Chris nods amiably and asks, "How's the kid?"

"Sicker'n a dog and twice as miserable," Buck says. "Put him to bed, oh, five minutes ago, mutterin' somethin' 'bout Josiah. Should have one hell of a sick head tomorrow." 

"Better a sick head than dead, I guess," Chris says. He flicks his cigar to the ground and looks up at the dark outlines of the bluffs. The hours that have passed since the end of the battle have done a lot to mellow his anger towards Vin's heinous act, enough so that he reckons he can look at the man without actually punching him in the face. He doesn't like it, he doesn't cotton to it, but he ain't quite so mad as he was. Ain't ready to forget it, but ain't quite so horrified neither. Besides, Vin fought just as well as the rest of them today, and it ain't right to make him sit out there, away from the celebration.

"Reckon someone should go relieve Vin, let him come down and enjoy some of this good cheer."

"I ain't gonna do it," Buck protests. Chris looks at him, slow and steady, and Buck reaches up to stroke the tips of his moustache before sighing. "Hell, and I was just about to go ask that pretty young thing over there if she'd care to dance." 

"Buck."

"I know, I know." Buck reaches down and grabs a rifle. "You think they're gonna attack tonight?"

"Nope. Still, better safe than sorry."

"Yeah, yeah." Buck walks away, grumbling under his breath. Chris watches him go and nods to himself. Better safe than sorry, and in more ways than one. Chris has seen the girl Buck's been flirting with, and her Pa's one of the villagers who scored himself a pair of pistols today. And nothing breaks up a party quicker than an angry Pa with an itchy trigger finger. 

Out in the desert a coyote begins to howl, a high-pitched yelping that sounds almost like laughter. Another coyote takes up the noise, and a third, and then the desert seems to explode into a cacophony of shrieks and yowls as the coyotes begin to fight over their meal. Chris shivers and looks out towards the black and not-so-empty night. The scavengers are feasting, he knows, and in his mind's eye he sees the pile where the bodies of the dead soldiers had been dragged after they'd been stripped of everything that could be of any sort of use and left, naked and grotesque, to bloat and bleach under the unforgiving sun, and to be eaten up by coyotes and buzzards and all the other carrion eaters of the world. And the fact that it's only Ghosts out there to feed the coyotes makes him strangely uncomfortable, raises an odd tension in his shoulders. It doesn't seem right that men should be left for the desert to take and scatter their bones, that they shouldn't be given a Christian burial. They had been enemies, but they had still been men, and deserved some recognition of that fact. 

And the fact that there had been so many bodies still rankled in his heart. Half those men died after the battle was over, shot in the back from above, and that don't sit well with Chris at all. Oh he understands Vin's position, in a way. He's heard all the stories about Andersonville, after all, and spent enough time in places that weren't none too nice to know that sometimes a quick death is about the kindest thing you can do for a man. And he's heard all the stories about what Indians do to their captives, though he finds it hard to imagine Tastanagi torturing a man for sport. And he knows that if they had lost today, Anderson would not have given them a quick death, for all that he professed to be a civilized man. Besides, what would they have done with their captives? Where could they have kept them while they made sure Anderson was truly gone? And afterwards, what then? Would they have taken the men back to town, locked them up in the jail, wired for the judge to stand trial over these men? Chris has never really paid all that much attention to the law, but he isn't even sure Anderson's men had committed a real crime -- those government folks had some right peculiar notions about how the Indians were to be treated, and Anderson's attack ain't all that different from what some of them Rangers in Texas get up to. Hell, Chris ain't even sure Washington's laws applied to this village.

He knows all these things, and that knowledge is enough to stem his anger towards Vin, to allow some small measure of forgiveness for the man's cruel savagery. But even so, the senseless killing makes him sick and weary, and the pleasure of the evening begins to wane.

A sudden surge of laughter from behind him drowns out the mournful coyote song. Chris turns away from the dark desert and looks back into the village. He spots Nathan in the middle of a circle, dancing an awkward sort of jig and being passed from one laughing villager to the next, a wreath of red and white cactus blossoms set slightly askew on his head. Chris smiles at the sight and takes a deep breath, feeling his good humor restored. He walks on, away from the dead men in the desert, slowly ambling his way towards where Tastanagi sits on a log, his daughter-in-law beside him. The old man has his grandson in his lap and is smiling down into the tiny, wrinkled face, letting one hand clutch at his gnarled finger. Chris sits down beside him, pleased with the old man's simple joy. 

"He's beautiful," Chris says, after awhile. 

"Yes." Tastanagi, cradles the child, strokes one aged finger down the boy's cheek. "I have had many children in my time. I've outlived most of them." With his free hand, he gestures at the village and smiles. "Now, like Eban, these are my children."

Chris nods. He understands, in a way, what the old man is saying. He looks over to where Adam sits, entranced with some bit of sleight of hand Ezra is performing. He knows he'd lay down his life for his son, knew it from the first time he held Adam in his arms. 

"Home, family," he says, contemplatively, eyes never leaving Adam's face and the rapt, adoring look he's wearing. His son's smile is almost blinding in its simple joy and Chris swallows a few times around the lump in his throat. Ain't been too many of those kinds of smiles since Sarah died, at least not so many that Chris has been around to see, and he looks away, resolutely pushing the events of the day away and letting himself only feel the warmth and joy of his son's happiness. "Definitely things worth fighting for."

***

It takes all of them a mite longer than usual to get going the next morning, for JD ain't the only one with a sick head and a sour belly from too much booze, though he's the one who's wearing his suffering most clearly. Out of common decency -- and remembered suffering -- Chris keeps Adam far away from the kid and as quiet as he can. 

Out of sheer malice -- and because he ain't about to let the kid think he can get away with talking to him like he did last night -- Chris asks the kid if he wants a plateful of runny eggs and greasy bacon for breakfast. He doesn't laugh at the speed with which JD runs towards the nearest bush, face so pale as to be almost green in color, but it's damn hard not to. 

"You," Buck says, eyes sparkling with humor despite the tiredness in them, "are a horrible human being."

Chris shrugs and finishes tacking up Rattler. "Never claimed I wasn't," he says. "Besides, kid had it coming to him."

"Reckon he did at that." Buck swings himself up into his saddle and nods companionably at Vin. "When was the first time you got drunk, pard?"

Vin looks over at Buck from where he sits atop his own horse, and appears to ponder hard before answering. "Reckon I musta been 'bout nine, I think."

"Whoo-ee! You get started young in Texas, don't ya."

"Guess so," Vin says, shrugging. He grins at Buck and adds, "Got one hell of a tannin' for it. I couldn't sit down for more'n a week."

Buck laughs and says, "Hell, you been my kid, you'd've been lucky I didn't whup your butt from here to St. Louis!"

"Now I know for a fact you were fourteen when you first got dead drunk," Chris says. "Least, that's what you've always told me."

"Hell, fourteen ain't nine." Buck grins. "Fourteen's practically a grown man." 

"Uh huh." Chris gives the girth strap one last good tug before squinting up at the sky. Looks like it's gonna be a nice, clear day, perfect for spotting the dust column thrown up by a regiment of soldiers on the move. He mounts up, then looks down at Adam. 

"You stay close to Nathan 'til I get back, ok?" he tells his son.

Adam nods sleepily, and for a moment Chris feels a little guilty for inflicting his son on Nathan for a second morning in a row. Still, he, Buck, and Vin are the only three in the village who are in any sort of condition to go riding out right now, and they need to make sure the Ghosts are really gone. 

"Should only take a few hours. You just sit quiet and stay out of his way."

"Yes Pa," Adam says and he shuffles away. 

Chris grunts and looks over at where Josiah and Tastanagi are standing over a cooking pot. There's a smell coming from that makes his stomach gurgle, though a minute ago he'd felt as inclined towards eating as JD. "What's cooking?" he asks, dubiously. 

"Chili and beans," Josiah says. "Should be ready by the time you're back."

Chris nods, then looks at Buck. "Ezra on watch?"

"Yup. Replaced me a couple of hours ago."

"All right, we'll ride a wider arc across the plain, make sure—"

"What hell is that?" Vin asks, his gaze trained on something that glints like metal high above them on the cliff top. "Is that…Is that the goddamn cannon?"

"It can't…" Chris trails off, his mouth suddenly dry. "Mother of God, it is. Everybody! Take cover!"

He slides off Rattler and slaps the big gelding on the rear. Rattler snorts, and starts, but doesn't move, and for once Chris wishes he hadn't trained his horse so well. Then the cannon fires and the horses are the least of his concerns. 

The echo of the cannon's fire is nearly as damaging as the ball itself, a reverberating _whump_ that Chris can feel in his bones. Across from him, the side of the bluff explodes in a shower of stones and dust, and cracks radiate out from the point of impact. Chris curses and shields his eyes against the debris. 

"Adam!" he shouts. "Adam! Where the hell are you!"

"I got him," he hears Vin call back, and he runs towards Vin's voice as the cannon fires again. 

The three of them crouch in the lee of a hut, Adam wheezing and scared, his eyes huge with fear and his chest heaving like a set of bellows. Chris kneels before his son and rubs circles on Adam's back. "It's okay, boy, just breathe. Just breathe."

"Another couple of rounds and they're gonna have the range," Vin says. Chris looks up at him and nods grimly. They can't stay here, and they both know it -- hell, the whole damn village knows it. They need to find shelter, some place where the cannon can't hit them and where they dig in, fight back. 

But first he needs his boy to breathe. 

"Here." Vin thrusts his bandana into Chris's hands. "Wrap it 'round his mouth, help filter out some of that dust." 

Chris nods his thanks and ties the pink cloth gently around his son's face. Adam wrinkles his nose at the smell, but his breath does start to slow and some of the color returns to what little of his face Chris can still see. 

"You okay?" Chris asks, quietly, and Adam nods. "Good." 

He stands up and moves behind Vin. Another bone rattling roar from the cannon shudders through him, and he watches, grim mouthed, as the ball slams into a wood hut, demolishing half the roof. 

"Got the range," Vin says. 

Chris nods. "Cannon's gonna tear through these huts like they're nothing." 

Vin nods and turns until he's looking straight up at the cliff top and the Ghosts. "Reckon they can't point it straight down, though," he says. 

Chris glances over his shoulder and grunts. Right up against the bluffs is as good a place as any, and better than most -- certainly better than the center of the village. He waits until the cannon fires again, then gives Adam a shove. "Run to the bluffs," he says. "Quick as you can."

Adam nods and takes off. Chris doesn't watch him go, though he desperately wants to. Too many things to do right now to indulge in making certain his son is safe. 

Besides. He trusts his boy. 

He nods at Vin and they head back into the chaos swirling through the village. There are children screaming and women crying and Chris has to swallow twice before he can croak out a single word around the lump in his throat. 

"Get to the bluffs!" he shouts to a group of villagers -- two men and three women and whole gaggle of kids. The adults stare at him, dazed, then nod and begin to move, picking the smaller children up and carrying them bodily to safety. 

"The bluffs, the bluffs!" Chris shouts again. Another dull _whump_ and the adobe hut in front of him implodes in a shower of dust and brick fragments. Chris stops so abruptly he ends up skidding to the ground in an undignified slide that leaves him coughing and half blind. He scrambles back up again and runs on. He fetches up against the side of the first hut to be hit and rubs the grit out of his eyes. Through a vision blurred by tears he sees Josiah carry a small child out of a hut, then fall to the ground and cover the small body with his own as the cannon rains down yet more destruction. He thinks the big man is dead -- killed, perhaps, by one of the foot-long splinters sent flying by the latest shot -- until Josiah rolls off the child and makes a feeble gesture with one hand. The boy runs and Chris curses. He dashes from his temporary shelter and grabs Josiah by the back of his shirt. 

"Come on," he grunts as he pulls the crazy preacher to his feet. "Ain't gonna lose you to the damn crows today."

Josiah laughs at him, breathless but truly amused. "Wouldn't make much of a feast," he says. 

"Don't think they rightly care about that."

He pushes Josiah towards the cliff and looks around again. A mother and her two young children run for their hut and he dashes out to stop them before they can go in. "There," he says, pointing to the cliffs, forcibly turning her around. "Go there!"

"Father!" Rain's cry makes him turn and he spots Eban trying to pull his piano to safety. 

"Leave it!" Chris shouts, running towards the old man. "What the hell are you doing, you damn fool!"

Another _whump_ , and Chris falls to the ground, covering his head with his hands. There's another crash of wood, the discordant jangle of snapping wires, and when Chris looks up again, Eban is dead. 

"No!" Rain wails, and Chris glances back towards her. She breaks free of Nathan's hold and runs towards where her father lies, as broken and mangled as his instrument. 

"Nathan!" he shouts, and he grabs her by the waist, swings her around so she can't catch more than a glimpse of her father's body. He passes her off to Nathan and she screams again, clawing at Nathan's arms, struggling to get free, to run back. Nathan hauls her away and Chris runs on, towards Tastanagi's hut. 

The old man stands in front of it, his face devoid of anything but horror. For a moment, Chris fears he's lost his wits to the shock of the attack, for the old man can only gape blankly up when Chris grabs him by the arm. 

"The bluffs," Chris shouts into his ear, voice hoarse and raw. "Get to the bluffs!"

Tastanagi nods, slowly. He starts to shuffle towards the cliff, and Chris curses again. He grabs Tastanagi around the shoulders and half-drags, half-carries him to safety. 

"What the hell happened to Ezra?" Vin shouts at him when he arrives. 

"I don't know!" Chris shouts back, though he has his suspicions. He pushes past Vin, pushes his way through the crowd huddled and bewildered villagers searching for his son. "Adam!"

"Over here!" Buck shouts back, and Chris heads towards Buck's voice, ignoring the babble of frightened voices and only vaguely aware that the rest of his men are following in his wake.

"You okay?" he asks Adam.

"Ain't none of us gonna be okay for long, Chris. Not 'til we do somethin' 'bout that gun!" Buck says, agitated, enraged.

"Way I see it, we got two options," Chris says. "First, we can ride up to that gun—"

"That ain't no option, that's suicide," Buck growls. Chris nods -- it hadn't been a serious plan anyway. 

"What's the other option?" JD asks.

"We can raise the white flag," Chris says, grimly. 

"Hell, that's as bad as the first," Buck says. He glances at Adam, then back to Chris. "I say we go with option three."

"Which is?"

"We mount up and ride the hell out of here."

For a moment, Chris is tempted. They've all earned their five dollars, and then some. But then he looks at the villagers, shaken but still determined, at Adam, who's gazing back at him with wide and trusting eyes, and he knows that he can't run away. Hell, it's never been in his nature to run once he's committed himself to a fight, even when the odds are against him.

"Go then," Rain spits out. Her eyes are red-rimmed from crying, but that just adds to the fierceness of her look. "Run like rabbits. But I will fight these men to my last breath."

"Served in the Union Army," Nathan says. "Even it was only just as a stretcher bearer. And I never did get no formal discharge. Fact that it's Rebs up there…well, I reckon that makes this my fight too."

"Hell, I'm not going anywhere," JD says as he loads up his six-shooter. "I haven't shot anyone yet!"

"They'll see us comin' 'fore we get within five paces of 'em and that _cannon_ ," Buck shouts, ducking low as the big gun fires again, "is gonna cut us to pieces!"

"Don't have to come 'long, Buck," Vin says quietly. "Figure them shootin' us'll give you one hell of a distraction."

"Josiah?" Buck says, and it's a sign of just how desperate he must be feeling of he's turning to the mad man for support.

"'Cowards die many times before their deaths,'" Josiah says, in his low, rumbling voice. "'The valiant never taste of death but once.'"

Buck stares at them, then grins and shakes his head. "Hell. Not like there were any horses still hangin' 'round here anyway." He pushes his hat back off his forehead a little and looks seriously at Chris. "Ok, hoss. What's the plan?"

"Have to figure out a way to get up that cliff without them seeing us," Chris says. "Vin, you been up there the most -- you see any sorta path we could use?"

Vin shook his head. "Buck's right. Way they're positioned, they've got a clear view down all the paths up to the top of the cliff. They'll see six men comin' from a mile away."

Chris swears and glances around at his men. "There's gotta be another way up there."

"There is," Imala says as he pushes his way into their huddle. "We can climb."

***

Chris watches with something close to awe as Imala scales the cliff face like some kind of strange, four-legged spider. The young man seems to find handholds and footholds in the slightest crevice, and at one point he's pretty damn sure Imala stands on nothing but thin air, the entire weight of his body supported by no more than a tenuous two-finger grip on some tiny bump that protrudes from the gray stone face. 

"Damn," he mutters under his breath, impressed despite himself. He looks down at his son and sees the same awe, the same wonder in Adam's face -- and a childishly calculating look that he knows so well. 

"No," he says, before Adam can even fully form the question in his mind. "You're staying down here with Tastanagi. And if I find you trying something like this back home, I'm going to give you the beating of your life."

"Ain't said a word," Adam mutters.

"Didn't have to." Chris steers his son away from the cliff and towards Tastanagi. "Damn impressive," he says, nodding towards Imala, now more than two-thirds up the face. 

"It's a tradition among the young men of our tribe," Tastanagi says. He looks down at Adam and smiles, calmly and placidly. "Run along, young Larabee. The other children are back there."

Adam makes as if to protest, then clearly thinks better of it, before making his way into the narrow crevasse the children hid in yesterday. Chris watches his son go, then turns to Tastanagi. 

"I can't promise anything," he says.

"You stayed," Tastanagi says. "That was more than enough."

Chris nods and shakes the old man's hand before going to join the rest of his men at the foot of the cliff. He glances up and shades his eyes, watching Imala disappear over the lip of the upper rim. A moment later he returns and throws down a long, coarse rope. Chris nods to the other five, then grabs hold and begins to haul himself upwards with a grunt. Behind him, he hears Vin say, "You remember why we're doing this?"

"Does it make any difference?" Josiah replies. 

"Guess not," Vin says. 

Chris grunts and climbs on, hand over hand, his boots scrabbling for purchase against the smooth cliff face. The rough fibers of the rope bite deep into his hands, and for a moment he worries that he'll start to bleed and won't be able to handle his gun. He pushes the thought from his mind -- he probably won't get the chance to do so much as draw before the Ghosts gun him down. 

Farther below, he hears JD say, "My hands are shaking so bad, Buck, I can barely hang on." 

"Good," Buck says. "Means your juices are flowing. Fear keeps you sharp, kid!"

JD grunts, and then says, a moment later, "Buck?"

"Yeah?"

"You are so full of crap."

Buck laughs, a little giddy and breathless, and says, "Just figurin' that out now?"

That's the end of the talking for a while. Climbing takes all of their concentration and effort and leaves no room for banter. In a way, Chris is glad of it. He's never held with gallows humor, though he knows that for some, like Buck, it's the only way they can cope with their imminent death. Personally, he finds nothing funny about dying. There's a gravity to the ending of a life that should be respected, he reckons, especially if it's one's own. 

He's near the top now and he gratefully takes the hand Imala reaches down to him. It takes more effort to haul himself up over the lip of the edge than he'd reckoned on, and for a moment all he wants to do is sit and let his aching legs rest for a bit. But there's no time for that, so he turns around and pulls Vin up, nodding in acknowledgment of Vin's silent thanks. His hands are slick from sweat and a little bit of blood, his palms painfully raw. 

"I'll go on ahead," Imala says, running off before Chris can stop him. He bounds up the rocky path, as nimble as a mountain goat, and then stop, abruptly, crumpling to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, the echo of the shot that killed him still reverberating back from the hills. Chris grabs for his gun, but his slick hands slip on the well-worn handle. Before he can reach for it again, the Ghosts are all around him, above him, rising out of the boulders like the apparitions they've named themselves after. Too damn many of them, and Chris reckons he won't even be able to unholster his gun before he's shot dead.

The Captain steps forward, and there's an urgency in his eyes, a begging quality to them. When he speaks, though, his voice is steady and full of steel. 

"Surrender," the Captain says. "Or die where you stand."

"Hell," Vin says, quietly, behind him. 

Chris raises his hands above his head, and doesn't react when the Ghosts relieve him of his weapon. He doesn't react when they march the six of them, single file, past Imala's body and to the plateau from which they fired their cannon. He doesn't react when the Captain orders them to sit. It takes the sound of a rifle cocking from somewhere behind him to make him stir, because that sound means they're to be executed, and he thought he'd read the Colonel better than that. 

"We're enemy soldiers," he tells the Captain. "You can't just kill us. We've got rights."

The Captain shifts uncomfortably, then shakes his head. "You're hired killers," he says. "You have no rights."

Chris opens his mouth to speak again, to argue that the Ghosts' own rules require the fair treatment of the enemy, but the one-eyed cuss who's got his gun trained on Chris cocks his weapon. He grins down at Chris, and Chris knows the evil looking bastard would shoot him given the slightest provocation, so he sits back down, slowly, angrily, but does nothing else. Beside him, Vin snorts, and Chris looks over. He has to suppress a grin when he sees Vin shift around until he's sprawled out on the ground, his entire attitude one of apparent nonchalance. He sits with his legs stretched out in front of him, his hands resting easily on his belly -- as though he's on some kind of goddamned picnic and not waiting for the command that will put a bullet in his brain. It's an act, of course, and one that Chris approves of, for all that it isn't wise to piss of one's captors. In this case, though, Chris doubts Vin's act of quiet disdain can do them any real harm, and he must admit he thoroughly enjoys the soldiers' ruffled feathers. 

He's just beginning to contemplate whether or not he could take the Captain down and use him as a human shield when Anderson exits his tent. He walks with a limp and a slight sway to his step, as though he's drunk or nearly so, but his voice is steady and even. 

"One battle don't win the war, boys," he drawls out. "Chain them up, Sergeant Darcy." 

The one-eyed bastard chuckles to himself as he pulls out a set of manacles. He grins, and snaps the chains around Chris's wrists, tightening the restraining bolt as far as it will go. It's not far enough, because when Chris raises his hands the shackles move ever so slightly down his wrist. A small movement, but it's enough -- it has to be enough. 

"I was at Shiloh, Captain," Anderson says, but loudly enough that Chris knows he's speaking more to his prisoners then to his own men. 

"I know you were, Colonel." 

"The Union lines had broken. They were in full retreat. There was no way they could counterattack. But they did. Our surviving officers were herded up like cattle, forced to watch as they raised that Union flag." Anderson spits to one side as he says the last words. "Then they fired off that cannon and we were all left for dead. I lay there amongst that carnage, surrounded by the bodies of my dead brothers…" He trails off, and for a moment Chris thinks he's done, thinks he's said his peace, his justification for their murder. But then Anderson shifts, looks down at the hat he holds in his hands. 

"Well," he says at last, "we're gonna raise the Stars and Bars over that little village. I want it to be the last thing these boys see."

The one-eyed cuss -- Darcy, Chris supposes -- laughs again, then hauls Chris to his feet. 

"Come on, Billy Yank," he says. "On yer feet." 

Chris jerks his arms out of Darcy's grip, but gets to his feet. He follows the other six as they make their way further down the plateau to a small stand of cacti. Behind him, a group of Ghosts grunt and strain as they push the cannon into a new position. 

"How d'you like the wild west now, kid?" Buck asks as they're marched along. It's an idle question, Chris knows, but the kid doesn't and Chris can see him getting all riled up. 

"You think you've got me pegged, don't you Buck?" JD spits out, still standing while the rest of them sit down in a line. "Yeah, I lived in a big mansion. My mother was a chambermaid. Never knew my father. The family made me a stable boy, and I taught myself to ride." 

"Shut up and siddown," a Ghost says, throwing JD down on the ground at the end of the line. 

JD grunts as he lands on the ground, then pushes himself back up. "Mama died last year," he says. "Wanted me to go to college. Saved up all her life for that. Wasn't anywhere near enough."

Buck nods, slowly, and says, "Life's tough, ain't it." He turns his head around until he's looking directly into the muzzle of the cannon. "And then you die." 

JD looks taken aback by the words, and, to be honest, Chris is too, a little. It's an oddly philosophical sentiment for Buck to have, all things considered. 

And then the moment is broken as Josiah leans towards Buck and says, "Mind not leaning on my bad leg?"

Chris chuckles a little to himself, then looks down at his hands. He moves one manacle up and down on his wrist, tucks his thumb in snug up against his palm. He can just get the cuff to slide a quarter of an inch up his hand. He can get it further, he knows, though it hurt like a son of a bitch to get it that far. He needs liquid, though, something to help it slide. 

There's a commotion on the far side of the plateau, over in Anderson's tent. Chris feels the others shift their attention away from the cannon to the noise, but he doesn't look up. He spits down onto his hand and slides the manacle up and down again. A little further this time, but not enough, and his mouth is damn dry from all this dust. 

He shifts the manacle around again, turning it this way and that. The circle of steel moves easily enough, but it still won't go much beyond the point where his thumb joins the rest of his hand. Chris slides the cuff back down and frowns. There has to be—

His thoughts are interrupted when Vin's shoulder pushes up against him, nearly throwing him to the ground with the force of the blow. He looks up, confused, then down the line to where the Captain sits between Nathan and Vin, his own hands manacled and a look of hurt confusion on his face. 

"Looks like the Colonel ain't too happy with sonny boy over here," Vin says as Anderson rides past. 

Buck laughs, then says, "Well how 'bout it, Johnny Reb? Bet you never thought your boss would go loco on you."

"Colonel Anderson was one of the finest soldiers in any man's army," the Captain says. "I owe my life to him."

"Reckon he's decided to collect on that debt," Vin says. 

The Captain stares at Vin with cold, helpless fury, though Chris reckons that the fury ain't really directed toward Vin, and says, "Colonel Anderson was a great man. Before Shiloh, before the laudanum—"

"Bein' drugged to the gills don't excuse murderin' innocent women and children," Buck says. "Not even durin' the war." 

"I say this only to explain, not excuse. If you had suffered as he had—" 

But Chris ignores the rest of the Captain's speech. The rough edges of the fastening pin have caught on the flesh of his palm, tearing open a small scrape. It hurts, of course, in the sharp insistent way that small pains have of hurting, but it has also provided the liquid Chris needs, and he smears the blood around his wrist and higher up his palm. Now the manacle slides much more freely along his hand, and he forces it farther and farther up his palm, scraping away more layers of flesh, opening new shallow wounds. It sticks at the midpoint of his hand, and he can neither move it forward nor back. Chris spits upon his hand again and grits his teeth. He tugs, hard, and the cuff moves imperceptibly forward. He can feel the small bones in his hand grinding together under the unbending pressure of the steel cuff, and for a moment he considers stopping. What is freeing himself of one cuff going to get him, in the end? It isn't like the situation has changed any. Even with Anderson and the bulk of his soldiers heading down into the village, their weapons have been seized. The best he can look forward to is a quick shot to the head instead of a cannonball to the belly. 

"'Bout damn time," he hears Darcy say, registering the words with only half of his attention. "They'll be raising the flag soon."

"I wouldn't want to miss this," he hears Ezra drawl, and that snaps his attention away from contemplating his too short future and back into the present. For a moment, he forgets the cuff, forgets the Ghosts, forgets the cannon pointing right at him. All he can think about is the fact that Ezra isn't dead -- and all the implications of this fact. In that instant, Chris reckons that if he could, he'd kill Ezra right where he stands. 

And then the anger fades, becomes something less than all consuming, and Chris can think rationally again, can turn his mind from the shock of Ezra's sudden appearance to what advantages it might bring. 

"Well, well. The prodigal son," Josiah murmurs. 

"Nobody move or he's dead," Ezra says. He's dressed like one of the Ghosts, in a long duster that had probably been white, once, and he's pointing the rifle he's carrying at Darcy. He glances towards Chris and the rest, and grins, cocksure and arrogant. "I leave you boys alone for five minutes and look what happens."

"You'll only get one shot off before we take you," Darcy says, and though Chris can't see his expression he can hear the smug assuredness in the bastard's tone. 

"Then you best discuss amongst yourselves which one of you is going to die." Ezra licks his lips, and now there's a desperation to his smile, an edge to his bravado that shows it to be just as feigned as Vin's nonchalance. Though he uses the same words as before, even the same inflection, Chris knows this isn't the flash bastard he met in the bar in town. Then, it was a matter of saving his own skin against a bunch of drunken cowboys, who were liquored up but not inclined to kill. A world away from hard and hardened soldiers who are willing to kill in cold blood, Chris reckons. Fancy tricks aren't going to work out here. 

Chris grits his teeth and goes back to pulling on his cuff with renewed vigor. 

Darcy laughs, mean and nasty. "Pick him yourself. The rest of us will tear you apart."

Ezra licks his lips again. His eyes flit back and forth, assessing the situation, then he lowers the muzzle of his rifle and points it straight at the powder keg sitting by the cannon's wheel. 

"Well I guess I'll just have to take all of us then," he says, and the way he says it makes Chris think that this is not the bluff the Ezra intends. 

"Powder keg's empty, mister," Darcy says, then nods to the others as Ezra's shoulders sag and a look of true dismay crosses his face. "Now drop it."

Ezra drops the gun and raises his hands. He winces as Darcy grabs one arm and starts to yank it behind his back. 

"Big mistake, sonny boy. You shouldn't have tried that." 

"I know," Ezra says, and he sounds both shocked and disgusted with himself. "I can't imagine what came over me." 

Darcy laughs and looks down at the manacles in his hands. Ezra shrugs, and the derringer he keeps up his sleeve drops down into his hands. He fires, once, catching Darcy full on in the face. In the stunned second of silence that follows, Chris pulls his manacle fully off his hand. He whips his still cuffed hand at the guard standing next to him, and the heavy steel cuff hits the man in the side of his knee. The Ghost goes down, screaming in agony, and Chris yanks the man's revolver out of his belt. He's up and firing before the rest of the Ghosts can do much more than shout, and he takes down the two standing by the cannon in quick succession. Behind him, he can hear Vin moving about in the dirt, and then the sound of a rifle going off, and the man running for the horses falls down to the ground. He turns, looking for the next target, and sees Ezra pointing a gun at the last soldier. 

"Uh-uh," Ezra drawls. He glances at Chris, then looks away. 

Chris reaches down and pulls the keys to the manacles from the first guard's belt. He undoes his own, then squats down and undoes Vin's. Vin nods his thanks, and rubs his wrists as he stands. 

"Nice timing, pard," he hears Vin tell Ezra. 

"You weapon, Mister Tanner," Ezra says. "Try and keep hold of it this time."

He hears Vin chuckle, and walk away. Chris frowns and tries to keep hold of his anger. He's glad Ezra returned, true enough -- without that moment of distraction, he'd never have been able to take the guard unaware. On the other hand, if Ezra had been where he was supposed to be this morning, Chris reckons he wouldn't have needed that distraction in the first place. 

"Came back, didn't he?" Buck says, quietly, as Chris undoes his chains. 

"Shouldn't have left in the first place. Damn near got all of us -- got _Adam_ \-- killed." 

"Well now, ain't rightly sure that's the case. Ain't a whole hell of a lot men can do against a gun, 'cept get themselves killed in interestin' and painful ways, even with a warnin'. Ain't sayin' you gotta be bosom buddies with the man, but…well. He did come back." 

Chris grunts and moves on to Josiah. "Preacher man."

"Chris."

"Gonna lecture me too?"

"Wasn't planning on it." 

Chris smiles and works the key into the keyhole. "Best you just keep it that way."

"You're out-numbered three to one," the Captain says. "Anderson was a good man, once, but he's a mad dog, now. You'll all die."

"We know what to do with a mad dog," Chris says. He stands and turns, almost hitting Ezra as he does so. The man's face is a picture of inner turmoil, trepidation warring with bravado, all laid over with a sort of shock that has nothing to do with narrowly escaping death and more to do with being here at all, Chris reckons. He has Chris's gun belt in his hands, and he holds it out, silently, like a peace offering, or a flag of surrender. 

Chris opens his mouth, ready to yell, ready to tear the man apart with words and fists, because no matter how grateful he is for Ezra's return, no matter how much he understands what a sacrifice that must have been -- for he had known exactly what he was getting when he asked Ezra to join them, and a decent human being hadn't been any part of that bargain -- he still can't stop the irrational rage that wells up within him at the thought that because of this fool, because of this fancy, flashy city boy with the golden tooth, Adam was put in the path of a cannon. But Buck is right. Ezra came back, put himself on the line for no personal gain. 

And, hell, if he can forgive Vin for killing wounded and unarmed men, then he can forgive Ezra for his greed -- for he knows, with a certainty that won't be shaken, that it was greed that led Ezra to abandon his post. At least the greed isn't an affront to his personal code. 

"This is the only second chance you'll get," Chris says to Ezra as he takes his guns. "Don't make me regret offering it." 

Ezra nods and looks down, away from Chris's unblinking gaze. He touches the brim of his hat, then walks away. Chris watches him go, then crouches down in front of JD. 

"Take me with you. You need me," the Captain says. "I know Anderson. I know his methods. I know how to kill him."

"He's just a man. Reckon we kill him the same as any other man," Chris says. 

The Captain shakes his head. "He's not. He'll keep coming. He won't stop until either he's dead or you are."

Chris pauses, then looks down at the key in his hand. He looks at the Captain, looks into his earnest, pleading face, then sighs. 

Hell. Seems like he's all about forgiveness today.

***

He stops by Imala's body on their way down to the village and picks up Imala's knife. He looks down at the young man, then farther down at what's left of the village. The villagers are huddled near the southern edge, the children pushed far behind the adults. The tattered flag is almost to the top of the makeshift pole, and Chris knows that in a minute Anderson will send men to find out why the cannon hasn't fired. He looks at his men, at the Captain, and nods. 

"Get ready," he says. "Time to finish this." 

The others nod in acknowledgement of his command and move to take their places behind the rocks. He makes sure he takes a position at the top of the path, one with a clear shot of the Captain. He's still not sure he should've taken the man along with them -- but then again there's a lot of things about this plan that he's not particular sure about, like leaving Ezra behind with the big gun. He doesn't doubt the man's assertions that he's had artillery training -- at least, no more than he doubts anything Ezra says -- but for all that Ezra seems truly contrite for running off, and truly desirous of making amends, he's still a cheat. Ezra may be experiencing a pricking of whatever passes for his conscience, but Chris ain't sure how long that'll last -- not long, he's thinking, and he'd rather Ezra be somewhere where his running away won't get them all nearly killed. 

Again. 

It doesn't take long before he can hear the sound of riders coming up the path. Chris hunkers down lower and hopes the kid doesn't ruin things by shooting too soon. But apparently Buck's managed to rein him in, because all four riders pass JD's position without incident. Chris waits until the lead rider is almost abreast with him before standing up and firing. The first man goes down fast, his horse neighing with fear and bolting farther up the path. Chris shifts his aim to the next man in line, but he's already dead, as are the third and fourth, their horses bunching up tight together in their urgency to escape. JD is trying to grab the reins of the last one, but Chris shakes his head. 

"Leave him," he says. "We need to get down to the village."

"But—" JD begins, then reluctantly lets the horse go. 

"Come on," Chris says. 

It takes them far less time to make it down to the village than it took them to climb to the top of the cliff. Not surprising, of course, since they don't have to haul themselves bodily up a rope to reach their destination this time. Still, Chris begrudges even this short trip, because every minute they take means one more minute in which Anderson might decide to start shooting the villagers. 

The crash of the cannon firing makes him jump, and he looks up to the cliff top just in time to see Ezra fire off a salute -- a cheeky one, he's sure. On the ground, the cannonball has kicked up one hell of a dust cloud, and Chris nods to himself. Ezra's come through, and while the ball hasn't killed any of the Ghosts, it's provided the rest of them with the perfect cover. 

"Spread out," he says. "Draw their fire away from the villagers. And be careful." 

"We know what we're doing," JD says, his voice made harsh and sharp with what Chris can only presume is excitement and nerves. 

Chris just shakes his head and walks straight down the road towards Anderson and his men. It's a damn stupid thing to do, he knows, because the dust clouds his vision as much as it clouds the Ghosts's. Still, he wants the chance to end this whole pointless battle as fast as he can, and he reckons his best chance for that to happen is if he manages to take Anderson down with his first shot. 

It seems to take forever for the dust to settle, and yet no time at all. He sees Anderson's eyes narrow, and he raises his gun to fire. 

It should have been a kill shot. Perhaps it would have been, had Anderson not instinctively jerked to one side. Before Chris can fire again, the Ghosts are in motion, some wheeling their horses around, others firing wildly at him. He curses and dodges to one side, fetching up behind part of Josiah's wall. He peers over the side and fires again, shooting a soldier down off his horse. A bullet _pings_ off the stone beside him, and he flinches away from the impact, from the sharp shards that fly towards his face. 

"Over there! He's over there!" he hears Anderson yell, and then, "Fight me like a man, you lily-livered son of a whore!"

"Get Anderson!" Chris shouts. "Whatever you do get Anderson!" 

He rises to a crouch and runs along the length of the wall, then pops up and fires again. He can hear the guns roaring all around him, his men's shots blending in with that of Anderson's. The noise is deafening, disorienting, and mingled with it is the sound of children screaming. 

His heart constricts. 

"Adam!" he shouts, though he knows his son can't hear him. "Adam, I'm coming!" He dashes back into the main road, runs, zigzagging his way towards where he thinks the villagers had gathered. A man on a horse appears out of the dust and smoke, gun leveled at him, and Chris fires as he throws himself to one side. Both shots go wild, and Chris scrambles to reorient himself, to regain his feet before the soldier can fire on him again. It's too late -- the horse is already wheeling around, the soldier is already bearing down, and Chris knows he's dead.

"Chris! Get down!" 

Chris ducks, instinctively, and the soldier falls to the ground before him. He glances back, and spots Buck, hiding in the doorway of one of the shelled huts. He nods to Buck in silent thanks, and Buck grins at him, wide and wild, and tugs the brim of his hat. There's a flash of gray behind him, and over Buck's shoulder he spies another soldier, this one aiming for Buck instead of him.

"Buck!" Chris shouts and brings his gun up. Before he can fire the solider falls to one side and the Captain steps into view. He stares down at the body for a moment, then looks up at Chris.

The look of grief in his eyes is almost overwhelming. 

Chris glances away, embarrassed, and it's his embarrassment that saves him, for he spots the next Ghost seconds before the Ghost sees him. He fires as he dodges, then fires again. The man goes down and Chris runs on, heading for the screaming, for Adam. 

"Chris, stop!" Nathan steps out from behind a rock and grabs him by the arm. "Get down, you damned fool!"

"He's my _son_ ," Chris growls as he yanks his arm out of Nathan's grasp. 

"And you ain't gonna do him no good runnin' to him in the middle of a goddamn gunfight," Nathan snaps back. "Only thing you're gonna accomplish is gettin' your fool self killed. Tastanagi'll look after him. Right now, we gotta kill Anderson -- only way you're really gonna keep your boy safe."

Chris bares his teeth at Nathan in a snarl of suppressed rage. Nathan's right, of course, but that doesn't change a thing about the panic he feels. He nods, then ducks down with Nathan behind a rock outcropping. Not far off he hears Vin whoop in excitement, and then a moment later the man slides down behind them, bleeding from a small scratch on his head. He grins at Chris like an idiot and says, "This one of them shoot first times?"

"Yeah. I think we've done all our talking for today," Chris says. He leans around the edge of the rock and spots Anderson atop his white, wild-eyed horse. There's a fence in the way, and try as he might, he just can't get a clear shot, though he wastes three bullets trying. 

"Goddamn it," he curses, breathing hard, as he brings his gun back down and reloads. He looks up at Vin, a mute acknowledgement and plea in his eyes, though doing so wounds something inside him -- not his pride, for he never claimed to be a sharp shooter, at least not in this sense, in the sense of hunting a man down through the brush and not out in the open, out in a decent, honest fight -- and says, "I can't hit the bastard!"

Vin nods and raises his mare's leg. He tracks Anderson's movements with a calm steadiness Chris wouldn't have thought possible, given the younger man's apparent high spirits. The second Anderson passes beyond the fence, Vin fires, hitting Anderson square in the shoulder. Anderson sways a little in the saddle, then pulls himself straight and fires back. Across the way, Chris sees Buck shoot, and Anderson cries out in pain as he's hit again. He doesn't fall, though, and he brings his gun around to fire at Buck, who dives behind a wall. 

"Bastard won't go down!" he hears Josiah say from where he and JD are taking shelter behind the Ghosts' own wagon. 

Chris grunts in agreement, then fires his own shot off, hitting Anderson high on the thigh. Anderson's horse neighs and rears a little, but Anderson keeps his seat, riding through the motion easily. 

"You can't kill me!" Anderson shouts. He pulls out a brown bottle from the inside of his coat and takes a deep draught, firing at Chris with his free hand. He tosses the bottle aside and tries to fire at Chris again. Though Chris can't hear it through the din of the battle, he knows Anderson's gun has run out of bullets, for no matter how man times Anderson pulls the trigger then gun doesn't fire. Anderson drops his empty weapon to the ground and draws his sword. He wheels his horse around, and the animal snorts and starts, its pink eyes rolling, its head tossing and yanking at the reins, clearly mad from the smell of blood and gun smoke and screaming, dying men.

"I'm a ghost of the Confederacy," Anderson slurs, waving his sword high above his head, as if in some sort of strange salute, "and I will not die!"

"Bastard's so pumped full of laudanum, we could cut off his head and he wouldn't feel it," Nathan calls out. 

"Yeah? Well he'll feel this!" JD shouts, and he breaks cover and runs out into the open, firing his pistols as fast as he can. Anderson turns at the noise and pulls his saber from its scabbard. He wheels his horse around and spurs it into a gallop, and Chris knows that he means to run the kid down. JD keeps firing, but if any of his bullets hit Anderson, they have no effect, and Anderson is as implacable and unstoppable as a raging river. In a way, Chris is impressed with JD. Headstrong though the boy is, it still takes a lot of guts to stand up to charging horse, especially a battle maddened one that's been trained to run a man down. Still, Chris can tell the moment JD's guns run empty, the kid's face going pale and frightened, and he stands frozen, like a deer brought to bay on the edge of a cliff.

"JD!" Chris shouts, and he takes out the nearest Ghost aiming for the kid. "Get back, you idiot!" 

"JD!" Buck dashes from his place inside the shelled hut and pushes JD to the side, right as Anderson swings his blade down. Chris can only watch in horror as Buck falls to the ground, the fire from Anderson's remaining men keeping him pinned down behind the rock. 

"Finish him!" Anderson roars.

"Josiah!" Nathan yells as he breaks cover himself. "Grab him!"

"Keep firin', Chris," Vin shouts, and he takes down another Ghost. Chris nods grimly and returns the Ghosts' fire, drawing them away from Nathan and Buck's prone form. 

"Kill them! Kill them!" Anderson shouts, but Chris and Vin have managed to force the Ghosts to break their line and retreat behind the broken shells of the village's huts. Chris glances back to where Buck fell just in time to see Josiah throw himself over Buck's body. Josiah jerks as a bullet hits him, and for a moment Chris fears that he's lost two men today, for Anderson is nearly upon them both. Then Nathan is by his side, one of his throwing knives in his hand, and he plunges it deep into Anderson's unwounded thigh. 

Anderson's horse rears again, higher this time, deadly hooves flailing out, and Anderson falls. He lands with a scream of pain and rage, and with that scream the battle suddenly ceases, the Ghosts suddenly unsure. Chris exchanges a look with Vin, and the two of them step out from behind their rocky shelter. They move forward slowly, guns at the ready, while Anderson pulls himself to his feet. Vin cocks his mare's leg as soon as Anderson is upright, but Chris forces his hand down. 

"Give him a chance to surrender," Chris says. 

"This one of them 'polite' things?" Vin asks, under his breath, but he brings his gun down. 

"War's over, Colonel," Nathan says, his hands held up in a placating fashion, his voice quiet and gentle. "Lemme take a look at your wounds."

"I will not die," Anderson says, his speech slurred. "Not by no goddamn Yankee nigger's hand." He raises his sword up high above his head. Chris brings his gun up quick, but the Captain shoots Anderson in the hand before he can even cock the hammer. Anderson roars in pain and drops his sword. He gazes down at his mangled hand, then stares at the Captain in shock. 

"This has to stop, sir," the Captain says quietly.

"Francis," Anderson says, his voice breaking on the last syllable of the name. "You were like a son to me."

"Please, sir," the Captain begs. "Please, let us end this bloody conflict."

"Like a son," Anderson says again, and his unwounded hand reaches down for the gun still holstered to his belt. The Captain swallows, then cocks his gun. 

"Don't make me do it, sir."

"My God," Anderson says, and he gives the Captain a crooked and twisted smile. "You're a coward." 

The Captain swallows again, and his gun lowers inch by inch as Anderson unholsters his own weapon. He looks down, the back up, and there's a grim determination in his eyes. He raises his gun again, and his aim is steady and true. "Colonel, please. Please don't make me kill you."

"You don't have the guts, Francis," Anderson says. He cocks his gun, but before he can fire the Captain shoots, his bullet hitting Anderson square in the chest. Anderson looks down, gaping in astonishment, then falls to his knees. 

"I'm sorry," the Captain says. "I'm sorry."

Anderson looks back up, and though his mouth moves no sound comes forth. He blinks, once, and then falls forward, face first, to the ground. Chris steps forward and nudges the body with the toe of his boot. He looks at the Captain, who stares at him with an expression of abject misery and regret. 

"He's dead," Chris says. The Captain nods and turns to the remaining Ghosts. 

"The war is over," the Captain says. "Let's go home."

One by one the Ghosts turn their horses and ride out of the village. The Captain watches them disappear into the desert, then turns and retrieves the tattered remnants of the Confederate flag from where it hangs, limp and lifeless, from the branches of a stunted tree. The Captain stares at it for a long while, before balling it up and thrusting it at Chris. 

"Burn it," the Captain says. 

Chris nods. He takes the flag from the Captain, then says, "Captain. I'm sorry it came to this."

"Only a sergeant, friend," the Captain says. "The Colonel promoted me after Chattanooga. But I was always a sergeant at heart." The Captain smiles, a small, slightly bitter smile, and snaps off a salute. "Sergeant Francis Corcoran of the Army of the Confederate States of America, retired." 

Chris nods again. "Well. I ever see you or any of your men in these parts, I'll kill you." 

Corcoran laughs at that and shakes his head. "I understand." 

He holds out his hand and, after a second, Chris shakes it. Corcoran salutes again, then walks over to Anderson's horse. He mounts up and rides away, following in the dusty trail of his men. Chris watches him go and shakes his head. The last, stupid battle of war already won. Well, he can only hope that for once the only casualties are on the loser's side. He turns around, slowly, and surveys the battlefield. There are a lot of gray-clad bodies on the ground, but no villagers that he can see. Of his men, only Josiah and Buck need tending, and Nathan's already cutting Josiah's serape to ribbons and muttering dire words about foolish old men and their goddamn crows. Chris can't tell if Josiah is alive or dead, but he reckons Nathan wouldn't be railing at him if he were dead. The fact that Nathan's ignoring Buck does give him pause, and he's torn between wanting to find his son and wanting to go to Buck's side, make sure he still lives. The thought of losing Buck makes his heart ache so bad he can barely breathe around the pain, and he's not sure he'll be able to keep his cool if he goes to Buck now and confirms that he's dead.

Buck groans, and that makes up Chris's mind. He drops to his knees beside his friend and grabs Buck's hand, shoving JD to the side as he does so. 

"You die on me now and I'm gonna kill you, Buck," he says. Buck laughs at that, weakly, and shakes his head. 

"We get him?" Buck asks.

"Yeah. We got him." He's acutely aware of Nathan kneeling down on the other side of Buck's body, of the gentle way with which Nathan cuts Buck's shirt away from his body.

"Good." Buck closes his eyes and grits his teeth around a scream as Nathan presses down on something near the cut on his chest. 

"Buck," JD says, his voice broken. 

"Hey kid." Buck reaches up and pulls off his hat, his movements slow and careful. "Do me a favor." He holds the hat out to JD and smiles, faintly. "Get yourself a real hat."

"Buck," JD says again, and he sounds like he's close to tears. 

"Dyin' man's wish," Buck says. He looks back over to Chris and adds, "Guess I ain't gonna be able to see all them fine ladies after all."

Beside him, Nathan snorts. "You ain't dyin', you fool. We just need to get you stitched up, and I reckon you'll be back in my clinic within a month, needin' some ointment 'cause you've gone and gotten yourself another one of them private maladies." 

Chris looks sharply at Nathan and says, "You sure?"

"Seen a man get a worse cut shavin' himself," Nathan says, and though he's exaggerating, Chris knows that the core of what Nathan's saying is true. "More worried 'bout Josiah, really." 

Chris breathes out in relief, then stands and says to Vin, "Help JD get them to Nathan's tent." 

Vin nods and leans down to where Josiah is still lying in the dirt, his chest wrapped up tight in dirty bandages made from his own clothes. He pulls one of Josiah's arms across his shoulders then heaves the big man upright. "C'mon, Josiah," he says, as he half-drags, half-carries him towards Nathan's tent. "Now when're you gonna learn you ain't gotta stop every damn bullet with your body?"

Chris doesn't hear Josiah's answer, but whatever it is it makes Vin laugh. Chris watches them go, watches as JD and Nathan carry Buck up to the Nathan's infirmary, before he walks away himself, seeking out both Tastanagi and his son. 

He finds Tastanagi first. The old man is standing in the middle of his ruined village, staring at the bodies of the Ghosts and the destruction in his village. His eyes are red rimmed, and he looks about with a dazed expression on his face, like that of a man who's received a blow to the head. Chris touches Tastanagi's shoulder gently, then pulls Imala's knife out of his belt. 

"It's Imala's," Chris says, and he has to swallow before he can say the next word. "He's up on the plateau. I'm sorry."

Tastanagi nods, slowly, and takes the knife. He looks down at it, then back up at Chris. "You fought with him, not against him." The first tears begin to trickle from his eyes, cutting a winding path through the dust that covers his face. " _Mvo_."

Chris nods back, unable to trust his voice, unable to think of anything except that Tastanagi is a better man than he will ever be. 

"Adam," he says, then trails off, obscurely ashamed to ask if his son lives so soon after telling Tastanagi that Imala has died. 

"When the shooting began, we took the children back to the crevasse. He is fine."

Chris nods again, and opens his mouth to speak, to say something. But words have never been his strong suit, and in the end he can do no more than clasp Tastanagi's shoulder and give it a gentle squeeze before heading back to the bottom of the cliff. 

"Adam," he calls, his voice hoarse with emotions he doesn't care to name.

"Pa!" Adam runs to him, his face a perfect picture of relief. "Pa!"

Chris grabs Adam up into a hug and is grateful beyond words when he feels his son's tiny arms wrap around the back of his neck and hold on tight, as though Adam is afraid to let go.

"I was real scared, Pa," Adam says. "I tried to be brave, but I was real scared."

"I know, son. Me too." 

He squeezes Adam tight then, reluctantly, puts his son down. 

"Where's Uncle Buck?" Adam asks. 

"With Nathan. He got hurt."

"Is he…" Adam begins to say, then stops. He chews on his bottom lip for a minute then looks back up at Chris. "Is he gonna die?"

"Nathan doesn't think so," Chris says. He reaches down and takes Adam's hand, wanting to maintain a physical connection with his son for as long as possible. "Come on. I'm sure he'd love to see you." 

The villagers are already stripping the bodies of the dead soldiers, Chris notes, as he walks Adam up to Nathan's tent. They work with a silent efficiency, taking all that can be used, before dragging the corpses to a slowly growing pile in the middle of the village. Chris watches them for a moment, then shakes his head. Too many men, needlessly dead. 

"How'd Uncle Buck get hurt?" Adam asks.

"The Colonel cut him with a sword." He watches Adam's eyes go wide, then slightly speculative, and he sighs. "No, you can't have it."

"Wasn't gonna ask for it," Adam mutters. 

"Uh huh," Chris says, but lets it go. They're at Nathan's tent now, and Chris is glad to see that only Buck and Josiah appear to have been wounded in the last, desperate battle. He pauses, for Josiah is lying flat on his belly, his arms tied down tight to the legs of the table and JD lying bodily across his legs. There's a leather wrapped bit shoved into his mouth and a look of intense agony on his face. Nathan stands behind him, arms bloodied nearly up to the elbows, his mouth rucked up in a grimace of concentration. He makes a twisting motion with one arm, and Josiah screams, his voice barely muffled by the gag. 

"Come on," Chris says, leading Adam away. "We'll come back when Nathan ain't so busy."

"But—" Adam begins, but Chris pulls him away. 

He spots Vin and Ezra at the outskirts of the village, and heads towards them. They're talking quietly together, Ezra on his dark sorrel and holding the reins to a string of four strange horses -- most likely the mounts of the four men they'd killed on the path. 

"Ahh, Mister Larabee," Ezra calls out, and though his voice is cool and calm, there's a skittish tension to the way he sits upon his horse that he can't quite mask. "I was just telling Mister Tanner here that seeing as how these fine beasts were without masters, I took it upon myself to provide them with one." 

"Was thinkin' 'bout heading out and roundin' up the horses," Vin says as he mounts up on the least cow hocked one of the bunch. "You comin'?"

Chris shakes his head. Rattler and Romeo will come back soon enough, brought in by the memories of good hay and sweet water, and the other three horses are still safe in the village's corral, miraculously unharmed despite the two-day battle. Vin nods in acknowledgement, then looks at the stack of corpses. 

"Coyotes'll be eatin' good for a while, I reckon," Vin says. 

"Like the crows?" Adam asks, and Vin looks down at him, an unreadable expression flitting across his face. 

"Yeah, like the crows." Vin looks out across the barren, dusty desert, eyes tracking the flight of a pair of buzzards circling the spot where yesterday's victims lie, and he sighs. "Damn scavengers're the only real winners in a fight like this." 

"You planning on coming back after finding your horse?" Chris asks. 

"Ain't got my five dollars yet," Vin says with an oddly knowing smile. He kicks his borrowed horse into motion and rides out in a cloud of dust. Chris watches Vin go, then turns back to Ezra. The flash bastard is off his horse and eyeing Chris with a wariness that Chris suspects is partially feigned. Chris gazes back at him, eyes steady. He wants to be mad at Ezra, wants to be furious, for now is the time for fury. But he can't muster up the energy to be more than wearily resigned. 

"There any truth to that story about the gold?" he asks Ezra, as neutrally as he can. 

"One mine, long since collapsed," Ezra says. He shifts, awkwardly, and adds, "I had just entered it when—"

"Save it," Chris says. He closes his eyes, suddenly tired right down to his boots. He tightens his grip on Adam's hand, a convulsive, instinctive gesture, then lets go. He looks up and meets Ezra's eyes, and in that instant he knows the flash bastard has read everything about him: has read Chris's exhaustion, his weariness, his deeply banked anger; has read, too, his overwhelming desire to take Adam far away from this half-ruined village and give him something better than death and loss for his surroundings. 

Ezra blinks, once, then looks down. He reaches out one hand and smiles at Adam, before saying, "Come, young Adam. I believe you missed out on my first Poker lesson the other day."

"Pa, can I?" Adam asks. Chris nods, and in that nod is his thanks to Ezra, a grudging gratitude for this small favor. 

He watches his son walk off, then rolls his shoulders back, trying to loosen up the tightness in his lower back. He turns and walks back up the low hill to Nathan's tent, and is absurdly relieved to see that there's no one lying upon the rickety table. Chris snags a seat on a wobbly three-legged stool and watches Nathan wash his arms clean of Josiah's blood.

"So?" he asks, at last, nodding to the two prone figures lying on the ground.

"Buck's wound was deeper than I reckoned, but he'll be all right. Provided he don't contract a fever, he'll be up in a day or two. Josiah'll need some more time. Bullet didn't hit nothin' vital, but he lost too much blood -- more blood than he could rightly spare. Not sure he'll make it through the night." Nathan sighs, and he looks just as exhausted as Chris feels. He shakes his head and says, "Don't reckon there'll be much celebratin' tonight." 

Chris looks up as a woman's wailing cry pierces the odd quiet of the village. It's Imala's wife -- well, his widow, now, Chris reckons -- and she is no longer a proud and haughty mother, but a woman bereft of the man she loves. Rain and a few of the other women close around her, herd her into one of the few huts still standing. 

"No," Chris says, as he watches Tastanagi and a group of young men start up the path to where Imala's body lies. "I reckon these people don't got much to celebrate anymore."

***

It takes two days before Nathan declares that if he has to listen to Buck whine about what a damn ugly nursemaid he makes for one more day he's going to kill the man, patient or not, and Chris reckons that that's as good a sign that it's time to head back to town as any. Hell, he'd been ready to kill Buck after one day of listening to him whine, even if half of that was the result of the fever speaking, and he reckons the fact that Nathan waited for two is just another sign of Nathan's inherent good nature. 

"All I said was that I reckoned that pretty daughter of Eban's could use somethin' to do to take her mind off all her grief," Buck says as Chris gives him a boost into his saddle. 

"Hell, I'm damned surprised Nathan didn't skin you alive for that," Chris says with a grunt. 

"He sweet on her?" Buck says, making an abortive motion to stroke his moustache. 

"What are you, blind as well as dumb?" Chris says. He hands Buck his reins and shakes his head. "Buck, you know I normally don't give a damn about who you decide to make time with, but I'm telling you now: Rain's off limits. I ain't gonna risk Adam's health just because you can't keep your damn prick in your britches."

"I was only foolin', Chris," Buck says with wounded pride. Chris rolls his eyes and steps back from Romeo. 

"I reckon you should let JD know you're all right," he says, instead. "Kid was damn worried about you."

"Hell, if he was so damned worried, he could've come and said somethin'," Buck mutters. Chris shakes his head again. He reckons it'll just embarrass both Buck and JD if he tells Buck just how many hours the kid spent sitting by Buck's side, fetching blankets and water and wiping away the sweat from Buck's face. Buck could use some more embarrassment in his life, but Chris reckons JD is a good kid, underneath all that bluster, and he's become oddly fond of the lad. He turns and walks toward the corral, his path converging with Vin's. 

"Where you headed?" he asks Vin. 

"Back to town to freshen up my supplies," Vin replies. "Then I'm off to Tascosa."

"Tascosa? Where the hell is that?"

"Little town in the Texas panhandle." 

"Why the hell would you want to go to Texas?"

"Got some business to take care of," Vin says. He glances out across the desert to the village's little graveyard and its newly dug graves. "Figure, man never really knows how much time he's got left to put things right."

Chris nods and begins to tack up his horse. "Well," he says, slowly. "If you're ever in these parts again, you know you've always got a place to stay."

"Yeah?" Vin asks, and Chris can hear the smirk in Vin's voice. Chris tightens Rattler's girth strap before turning around, but he can't quite keep the smile off his own face.

"Yeah. Hell, I'll even stand you a beer at the saloon before I run you out of town." 

Vin laughs and extends his hand. After a moment Chris reaches out to return the gesture. He's only mildly surprised when Vin reaches up to clasp his forearm in the way of some of the Plains Indian tribes. 

"We fought well," Vin says, and Chris nods. 

"Are you leaving?" Tastanagi asks as he comes up behind them. 

"Yeah," Chris says. "Reckon it's best to get Buck outta here before he gets too mobile." He slips his hand into his pocket and draws out the golden amulet. It's a warm, heavy weight in his hand, and he runs his thumb across the smooth face before handing it back to the old man. It's the right thing to do, and he'll pay or fight any man who'd argue with him; though he doubts any of them, even Ezra, will fight him on this. "Here. Never could figure out how to split it seven ways."

Tastanagi accepts the amulet with an expression of pleased surprise. He nods, solemnly to Chris and Vin, then says, "You are always welcome in our village."

Chris shrugs, uncomfortable with the gratitude. "Well, hopefully next time it'll be under better circumstances."

"I have no doubt," Tastanagi says. "For the next time we are threatened, we shall greet our enemies with great hospitality." 

Chris exchanges a look with Vin, then tentatively says, "You mean hostility?"

"No," Tastanagi says with a smile and a twinkle of impish delight in his eyes. "I mean hospitality. Why, I shall even open my doors to them." He gestures behind him to a hut midway up the slope, and two village warriors open its doors to reveal the gleaming muzzle of the Ghosts' cannon. 

Chris laughs and shakes his head. "Yeah, I reckon that'll do."

Tastanagi's face grows serious as he clasps Chris's shoulder. "As fathers," he says, "it is our misfortune to see our children grow. Do not fight it, my friend. You have a fine son, who is a credit to his father."

Chris nods and turns away, embarrassed to let the old man see how deeply he is touched by those words. He listens, with half an ear, as Tastanagi and Vin speak to each other in the Seminole tongue, and waits until he has his face once more under his control before mounting his horse. When he looks up from gathering his reins, Tastanagi is already walking away, and Vin has a contemplative look on his face. 

"What'd he say?" Chris asks, idly, but Vin shakes his head and doesn't answer. Chris shrugs and scans the village grounds for his son. 

"Hey kid," he hears Buck say, and he glances to his left, where Buck is slowly riding towards JD. "If you're not gonna wear that hat, I'd surely like it back."

"Buck!" JD exclaims, and though Chris can't see his face, he knows that JD is grinning like a fool. He watches JD straighten his shoulders before handing Buck his hat and saying, "You look terrible."

"Well, son," Buck says, carefully putting the hat on his head, "that's just damn impossible." Buck chuckles, then winces, before nodding to JD's horse. "You riding with us?"

"Just try and keep me away," JD says, before leaping into his saddle. "Yeehaw!"

Buck chuckles again, then grips his bandaged chest. "Don't make me laugh, kid."

"Faster!" Chris hears Adam cry, and he shifts his attention around to where Adam lies across Ezra's shoulders, laughing wildly as he's spun around. Ezra staggers to a halt, then carefully puts him down, going down on one knee to do so and panting slightly. Adam giggles madly and staggers a bit, bumping into a village boy, who's looking just as breathless and happy. The village boy grabs Ezra's sleeve and says, "Ezra, can I come?"

"A brave warrior like you?" Ezra shakes his head and looks down. "You've got to stay here and protect the village."

"You're a brave warrior," the boy says. "Why can't you stay?"

"'Cause Ezra's gotta come back with me and protect our town," Adam says.

Ezra glances up at Chris before saying, "I'm afraid my prior commitments must prevent me from lengthening my tenure in your charming little hamlet, young Adam. I shall remain only long enough to restore my depleted supplies before I must ride off."

"Oh," Adam says, and he looks down at the ground, his shoulders as slumped as the village boy's.

"Children, children!" Ezra says, chucking them both under the chin. "Be of good cheer! Now," he says, addressing the village child and handing him a pack of cards, "do you remember what I taught you?"

The village boy nods and clasps the pack of cards tightly. "Never draw to an inside straight."

"Good man," Ezra says, and he lays one gentle hand upon the boy's head. 

"As for you, my boy," he says as he grabs Adam by the waist, hoisting him up into the air as he stands, "I believe your father grows impatient for our departure." He hands Adam up to Chris, then touches the brim of his hat before mounting his own horse. He takes a moment to check his stirrups before looking down at Nathan, who stands with one arm wrapped around Rain's waist.

"Well, Mister Jackson," Ezra says. "Are you willing to ride with an old Southern boy?"

Nathan smiles and says, "Josiah ain't in any kind of condition to be moved, just yet. 'Sides, these folks need my help rebuildin' the place. Reckon I'll just stay here for a while."

Ezra touches the brim of his hat again, then turns his horse and rides out of the village at an easy trot, his horse quickly outpacing Buck and JD's slow, ambling walk. Vin nudges his mount into a slow jog and catches up with him, and Chris can just barely hear Vin say, "Shoot a cannon pretty well, pard."

"Dreadful," Ezra says. "I was aiming for Anderson."

Chris shakes his head and clicks his tongue at Rattler. The big black gelding snorts and steps out into a leisurely walk, not even trying to catch up with either Vin or Ezra. 

"Lazy bones," Chris mutters fondly to his mount, and Rattler twitches one ear back in silent acknowledgement. 

"Hey!" he hears Nathan shout and he turns in the saddle just in time to see Josiah heading determinedly for the rest of them, his big sorrel moving a careful walk. 

"Hold up," he shouts to the others, and pulls Rattler to a halt. 

"Get down off of that horse," Nathan says, catching hold of the horse's bridle. "You lost too much blood! You ride out now, you gonna die out there."

Josiah adjusts his hat, then says, "So be it, if that's what's meant to be."

"Your damn crows will get you soon enough without you makin' things so damn easy for them," Nathan says, but he lets go of the bridle and steps away. Josiah looks down at Nathan and grins. 

"You're a good man, Nathan." He looks over at Rain and winks. "You will have a happy life. And many fine and healthy babies."

Nathan stares at him for a long moment before shaking his head and backing farther away. "Fine. Go off and die. I ain't gonna come after you, you know. I ain't your mamma."

Josiah touches the brim of his hat, then kicks at his horse. The sorrel flicks his ears back and turns his head to gaze steadily at his rider, then sets out again at the same, slow walk, his pace smooth and even, refusing to move any faster no matter how hard Josiah kicks. Not that Chris reckons Josiah's kicking particularly hard. 

Chris watches Nathan return to Rain and cross his arms, glaring at Josiah's slowly retreating back. 

"Go," he hears Rain say. She takes Nathan's hat off of her head and reaches up to put it on Nathan, kissing his cheek as she does so. "I will wait for you." 

Nathan looks at her for a long moment, then runs to his horse. He saddles the big bay quickly, and Chris winces, knowing that they're going to have to stop before they manage to get even half a mile of riding in so Nathan can fix his cinch and straighten out his saddle. Still, he's smiling as he turns around and nudges Rattler into a quick trot, hurrying to catch up with the rest of his men. It had felt wrong to leave Nathan and Josiah behind -- hell, he reckoned it would have felt wrong to leave any of the other men behind, even Vin and Ezra -- as though he had somehow failed in his duty to them. They had all ridden in together, and though they would undoubtedly part upon reaching town, it felt indisputably right that they leave just as they'd come. 

Adam tugs on his coat sleeve and Chris looks down at his son. 

"We going home?" Adam asks. 

Chris looks up, looks at the six men beside him -- and a more motley and unlikely group of men he'd never seen -- and he smiles. 

"Yeah," he says. "Let's go home."

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Mendax and Randi2204 for the beta reads (and re-reads, and re-re-reads) and for listening to me blather. All spelling, grammar, and research fail are my own. More detailed author's notes can be found [here](http://todeskun.dreamwidth.org/183304.html).


End file.
